Unknown
by Ralph E. Silvering
Summary: 'It felt strange to be working with a Jedi once more.' Grand Admiral Thrawn and Jedi Knight Ezra Bridger have a conversation about the Yuuzhan Vong, which leads to adventures in the Unknown Regions. Post-Star Wars Rebels finale. Mentions of Team Kenobi-Skywalker. Ahsoka Tano, Darth Vader, and Captain Pellaeon make an appearance.
1. Unknown

Summary: 'Even if Thrawn somehow managed to return to Coruscant, any power he had had would be gone.'

Notes: Takes place directly after Ezra and Thrawn jump to lightspeed in the last episode of Star Wars: Rebels. I've been wondering what Thrawn would do next. So here is my take on it. Enjoy!

Unknown

Thrawn felt the tug which always heralded the jump to lightspeed and braced himself for death. The Jedi, Ezra Bridger, stood in front of him, his damnable power keeping Thrawn captive within the tentacles of the space creatures which had attached the Grand Admiral's fleet. But the bridge was hopelessly compromised, its transparisteel viewports wrecked by the creatures and Thrawn waited for the vacuum of space to claim him.

Distantly he thought that the space creatures looked vaguely like whales from Agomar. That couldn't be right, though. He pondered the tentacles pinning his arms to his sides. He didn't think the Jedi had been the one to send them into hyperspace, so it must have been…the whales?

 _Space pergil_ , he realized.

He also realized that the white of hyperspace streamed around them, but he was – the odds of probability asserted – still alive.

Bridger smirked at him, triumphant, and Thrawn felt an unusual surge of rage rise in him.

"You arrogant fool. You have no idea what you've just done."

There was a flicker in the Jedi's blue eyes – recognition – but Thrawn couldn't bring himself to care. He realized that he had failed. All those decades ago he had set out to find allies for his people, so that they would survive the coming storm. He had sacrificed everything, even his own honor, to gain enough power in Palpatine's Empire to make sure this part of the galaxy was strong enough to withstand the onslaught.

But that was all gone now; in one egotistical wave of the hand from someone born with too much power and not enough wisdom to wield it.

Even if Thrawn somehow managed to return to Coruscant, any power he had had would be gone. The Fifth Fleet was destroyed, and he had failed to crush the Rebellion on Lothal. The Imperial political elite had always hated the alien interloper in their ranks and Palpatine would find no further use for a Chiss from the Unknown Regions. Even Vader, his sometime ally, wouldn't be enough to save him.

Despair lurked at the corners of his mind, threatening to wash over him. But not for himself. Thrawn could no longer see a future where his people, and the people in the rest of this galaxy whom he had come to admire, survived.

The Jedi must have sensed some of Thrawn's emotions for his eyes widened, before he drew back his hand and Thrawn was abruptly released from the pergil's cold embrace. "No," he said.

"'No,' what?" Thrawn demanded, voice icier than ever before. He wanted to draw his blaster against the young fool once more, but he knew it would be futile.

There was a faint pounding from the other side of the bulkhead doors. Some of his men would soon be through and would overwhelm the Jedi, especially as he was without his lightsaber. All Thrawn had to do was wait.

He wondered where these pergil – and the Jedi – were taking the ship.

Bridger's eyes darted to the bulkheads before returning to Thrawn. He looked calm, if vaguely uneasy.

"No, I haven't been arrogant," the boy said, evenly. "I saw…the Force moves around you strangely, shattering into multiple points. And Master Kenobi told me to listen to what you had to say." He raised his chin, looking both old and young at the same time. "So, talk," he ordered.

Thrawn raised an eyebrow, unimpressed, even as his mind weigh the possibilities. _Kenobi? Skywalker's Master? The one Vader is obsessed with finding?_

Thrawn had thought the Jedi Master long dead, despite Vader's fixation, but he had studied the Jedi General's strategic deployments during the Clone Wars and found them sound.

 _Had Skywalker told Kenobi about meeting him in what the Republic called 'Wild Space'?_

Bridger was biting his lip. "If you want my help, you're going to have to tell me what's going on."

"Why would I possibly want your help, Jedi?" He was coolly amused at the presumption.

The Jedi boy looked stubborn. "My Master liked you…or at least respected you. And Obi-Wan said there was more to you than met the eye. I can tell you're worried, deathly worried, about protecting…someone." He frowned in concentration. "Your people," he decided after a moment.

Those intense Jedi eyes fixed on Thrawn. "Protect them from what?" he asked. "What's coming?"

Thrawn was surprised. Not much surprised him anymore, but this seemed a day full of the unforeseen.

 _Kanan Jarrus had respected him? What did General Kenobi know? What had the boy told General Syndulla and the rest of his paltry band of rebels?_

Thrawn studied the human in front of him. He knew his own red, glowing eyes were unsettling to most, but the Jedi boy seemed unconcerned, patiently waiting for the Imperial Grand Admiral's answer. Interesting. Perhaps Tarkin was mistaken in his assessment that Bridger and his master were not true Jedi.

"We call them the Far Outsiders," he said at last.

Before he could say anything else, there was a shout, a minor explosion, and then the bulkheads hissed opened. Stormtroopers poured through, basters ready and aimed at the Rebel Jedi.

Bridger raised a hand and then, like a sudden miracle, a slender, silver cylinder smacked into his palm. He ignited the Kanan Jarrus' lightsaber, its blue blade brilliant in the flickering darkness of the damaged bridge and stood at the ready between Thrawn and the white-armored troopers.

That lightsaber had been in Thrawn's personal quarters from when Rukh had recovered it after Jarrus' death. _How had the boy known it would be here?_

For a moment no one moved, and the galaxy held its breath.

"Grand Admiral" asked the Captain, his voice brisk as he awaited orders.

Thrawn assessed his options. Perhaps he wouldn't be returning home quite empty handed after all.

Bridger spoke without turning to look at him. "A friend of mine will follow when she's able. Perhaps you've heard of her." The boy's tone was cheeky and Thrawn felt minor annoyance at his obvious lack of discipline once more. "Ahsoka Tano."

 _The illusive Fulcrum. Kenobi and Skywalker's Padawan._

She had been Colonel Yularen's, and the ISB's, greatest opponent. Thrawn had thought her dead after the duel on Malachor. Vader had implied as much in his report to the Emperor. Although there had been those uncorroborated sightings of her on Tatooine…

Thrawn decided. Tano and Bridger would make valuable allies.

"Captain Pellaeon, have your men lower their weapons. We have a slight change in plan."

Bridger powered down his lightsaber and clipped it to his belt. He looked more centered, more certain, with his former Master's weapon in his possession. "These Far Outsiders, they're a threat?"

"To everyone and everything," Thrawn assured him.

Bridger studied him carefully, no doubt testing his words with that mysterious Force of his.

"Then I will help you," the Jedi Knight said simply.

Captain Pellaeon's eyes grew wide, his white mustache quivering. Several other crew members eyed the Jedi and the Admiral askance as they began to go about assessing the damage to the bridge.

Thrawn paid them no mind, reaching out to clasp the Jedi's hand when it was offered. He was undecided as to this turn of events – it felt strange to be working with a Jedi once more – but he could work with it. "Welcome to the _Chimaera_ , Commander Bridger."

Apparently, instead of death, he would be facing the future with a Jedi by his side.

It had indeed been a day for surprises.

End Notes: Yes, Ezra has inherited the ability to see shatterpoints, like his Master, and his Master before him, and Mace Windu before her. And I really wanted Ezra to have something of Kanan's to take with him, so the lightsaber being on board Thrawn's flagship made sense.

And the last time Thrawn worked with a Jedi was when he teamed up with Anakin Skywalker during the Clone Wars.

Also, Thrawn is inclined to respect Obi-Wan without even meeting him, just from studying his tactics during the Clone Wars and from the fact that Vader respects him. The Team of Kenobi and Skywalker lives! How did I do with Thrawn's voice?


	2. New Alliances and Old

Summary: Thrawn and Ezra continue to butt heads. Thrawn remembers his first meeting with Anakin Skywalker, during the Clone Wars.

Notes: I had no idea several of you would be interested in a story revolving around Thrawn and Ezra. I also have no idea where this story is going or how often it will be updated, but here goes.

New Alliances and Old

Thrawn found Ezra Bridger to be…annoying.

Two days into their journey, wherever they were going, with the bridge patched up and the pergil still directing their path, the former Imperial Grand Admiral decided that the Jedi in their midst was, in fact, very annoying.

"I still don't understand," the boy admitted ruefully, pacing back and forth before Thrawn's desk as the Grand Admiral, for the sixth time, explained to him the strategic assets of the Empire versus those of the previous Republic. "Why is the Empire both better _and_ worse than the Republic?"

Thrawn sighed.

The Jedi came and fiddled with the Jedi Temple Guard mask Thrawn had on display upon the desk. "Kanan would be better at this," the boy admitted, frowning at the mask.

Thrawn had no doubt that this would be true. From what the Admiral had observed, Kanan Jarrus, as leader of the _Ghost_ crew, had always shown an impressive grasp of tactics.

"Him and Rex were always going on about the Clone Wars and which Jedi was deployed where, and which fleet was stationed where, what ships could do this or that, the tactics used against this or that Separatist leader…" He looked up at Thrawn. "Why do you have this, anyway?" He held the mask up.

Thrawn reached over to pluck it from the Jedi's irresponsible hands. "Because your master chose to wear one," he said, placing the mask precisely back on its stand. "Clone Captain Rex? Of the 501st?" The battalion which was now called 'Vader's Fist.'

Bridger looked like he would stubbornly follow his own line of questioning but then he stiffly answered, "yes."

"General Anakin Skywalker's clone commander?" Thrawn asked, just to make sure.

The boy's frown deepened. "Yes. What of it?"

Thrawn wondered exactly how many people knew what had become of Skywalker, the Jedi's Chosen One, but doubted Bridger knew anything. He supposed this Captain Rex must have escaped the Jedi Purge at the same time Ahsoka Tano had. Undoubtedly, they had escaped together.

"I'm surprised Jarrus trusted a clone at all after their part in Order 66," he said, instead. A man who followed the tenants of a dead religion had always struck him as too loyal to trust those who had massacred and hunted down its members.

"It took him awhile," the young Jedi explained, now examining a holograph of Sabine Wren's artwork, "but Ahsoka trusted him, and learning about the control chip helped."

A piece of the puzzle Thrawn had always wondered about slid neatly into place. "What control chip?"

Bridged looked startled. "You mean you don't know? I would have thought you would know everything on how the Empire came to power."

Was that disapproval he was hearing? From a boy more than half his age, no less.

"I have been unable to find many records from that time," Thrawn admitted, "or to find a Jedi or clone trooper to ask," he added with a slight edge. "And Lord Vader refuses to speak of it besides to say the Jedi betrayed the Republic."

The Jedi snorted. "I'm not surprised, though you could have just asked Ahsoka. Fulcrum. She was all about information." The kid looked at nothing for a moment. "What a mess." He bit his lip in thought.

"Rex said the clones were all implanted with a chip in their brains by the cloners on Kamino. Towards the end of the war, the Jedi and the 501st were made aware of this after one of the chips malfunctioned, and they investigated. They were told that the chips were there to prevent the clones from murderous actions, like their gene donor committed, and to make them more docile to following orders."

Bridger began to pace back and forth, hands held loosely at his sides and back straight. Those years in the Rebellion had obviously imparted some military mannerisms upon him.

"Rex and Clone Commander Cody were suspicious of this explanation though, and they removed Rex's chip to see what would really happen." Bridger shrugged. "It ended up saving his life. And Ahsoka's."

Thrawn got up and moved to stand before a piece of artwork which had originated from former Jedi Master Mace Windu's homeworld. He clasped his hands behind his back. "And the Jedi? What did they know?"

"Ahsoka said the Jedi Council knew the chips had mostly likely been implanted by the unknown Sith Lord who was behind the Clone Wars. But the war had gone on too long to pull the clones back. The Republic was unstable. She said they hoped to end the war before the Sith had time to enact their own plan."

General Windu's idea, no doubt. That Jedi had always been bold and uncompromising.

"They gambled and lost," Thrawn summarized, disparagingly.

Bridger's voice held anger when he snapped back, "so did you."

Thrawn felt a flash of rage at his careful planning being labelled as a gamble, but he turned around and carefully assessed the Jedi. Instead of the burning righteousness he expected the boy to display, Bridger was calm and controlled once more. "Such loyalty to a group who were destroyed through complacency and stupidity," he commented dispassionately.

"That's Palpatine talking," Bridger shot back.

Thrawn walked back across the room and once more seated himself behind his desk. "The Jedi Order fell because they made mistakes. You know this to be true."

"We all make mistakes," the boy insisted. "They did the best they could."

"Did they?" Thrawn contemplated that. "I doubt it. Otherwise they wouldn't have been so completely eradicated."

"Like you were?" the boy challenged again. "One Jedi Padawan and a couple of pergil destroyed your entire fleet." He stared defiantly at Thrawn. "Not even you could predict the pergil because you would have had no way of knowing that I had run into them before. What _mistake_ did you make?"

The Jedi's tone, his self-righteous insolence, rankled. "I should have aerial bombarded your base on Atollon until you, your master, and your entire Rebel cell was incinerated," Thrawn said coldly. "If I had done what needed to be done, I wouldn't be returning to Chiss space with just one ship, and _you_."

"'Do what needed to be done?'" the boy echoed. "Now you sound like Anakin Skywalker," he decided, smug, and in the next moment he looked chagrined. "And me," he admitted, "before I almost got all my friends killed, which would have happened if Kanan and Hera hadn't saved us. And when I led Maul right to Master Kenobi." Now he sounded deeply embarrassed.

The boy's eyes dropped to the desktop and he looked momentarily disheartened. "He would be better at this than me, too." He reached down and tightly gripped Kanan Jarrus' lightsaber.

Going over the past wasn't helping, Thrawn realized.

"Well, you are here. Not them," he said. "So, we must make do with what we have."

Later, much later, after they had exhausted themselves arguing, Bridger went off to do…something Jedi-related, and Thrawn spent a long time looking at that Temple Guard mask.

From his research, he knew that Temple Guards wielded double-bladed yellow lightsabers, that they were what the Jedi called Sentinels. Although during the last days of the Republic, they mainly guarded the Jedi Temple on Coruscant, they were known in Jedi History as protectors of the Jedi Order itself.

Thrawn had found it particularly…interesting, that Ahsoka Tano, one of the last of that Order, once wielded a yellow-bladed shoto in her off hand. And that after her disappearance, the recently-blinded Kanan Jarrus covered his sightless eyes with the top part of a Temple Guard's mask.

There were even whispers that the former Grand Inquisitor had once been a Temple Guard himself.

All academic of course. But Thrawn had found that patterns were particularly relevant where Force-users were concerned.

" _Are you sure you're up for this?" the young human male, with the cocky grin, challenged him_.

 _Thrawn, three days without food or sleep, had merely sent him a withering look._

 _The human pressed a button on the silver cylinder he carried and a humming, blue blade shot out. It was about the length of a sword and it vibrated in a way that was both compelling and alarming. The other man shrugged as if to say that Thrawn's business was no concern of his._

" _These barves are gonna be in for a surprise." There was danger in those blue eyes, and exhilaration at the fight to come._

" _We cannot get drawn into their trap," Thrawn cautioned, glancing around their makeshift shelter of tree roots to see their adversaries approaching rapidly._

 _The man's lopsided grin was most annoying. "Hey! What do you take me for, anyway?"_

" _A reckless fool," Thrawn said, repressively._

" _Actually, my name's Anakin Skywalker." The young man held out a hand and told Thrawn he was supposed to shake it when the Chiss merely looked at him blankly. "I'm a Jedi Knight."_

 _Thrawn studied his unexpected ally carefully. He had no idea what a Jedi Knight was. The traders from whom Thrawn had learned Sy Bisti – the language he used to communicate with this Jedi Knight from the Republic – had never spoken of them._

 _The blue eyes were reckless, but also compassionate. Those large hands were strong and calloused, signifying that he was used to arduous work, but he had clearly been well-educated and spoke several languages. The scar on his face spoke of success in combat, and his stance and bearing were military. There was defiance in the set of his mouth, but a deep-seated vulnerability in the way his eyes darted up to try and read Thrawn's expression. He was a study in contradictions._

" _My name," said the Chiss, "is Mitth'raw'nuruodo. But if we survive this battle, Anakin Skywalker, you may call me Thrawn."_

End Notes: Yeah, so Ezra and Thrawn are still not seeing eye to eye. It's to be expected. I didn't think I would make them argue about the Jedi Order, but looking back on the chapter (and the books/show) Thrawn does have serious reservations about Jedi and all Force-users so it makes sense, I think.

Did you like the Anakin flashback? I wish we could have seen Anakin and Thrawn interact in "The Clone Wars" show. That would have been amazing! I'm really looking forward to the Zahn novel "Alliances" about Vader and Thrawn, which is coming out this July! Anyone want a Darth Vader POV scene detailing his reaction to Thrawn's disappearance?


	3. Best Left Forgotten

Summary: Meanwhile, back on Imperial Center…

Notes: The Empire's response to Thrawn's disappearance. Darth Vader POV.

Best Left Forgotten

Darth Vader, Lord of the Sith, stood before his master and tried to think nothing at all.

"Most unfortunate, indeed," the Emperor hissed in a tone of voice which made Vader certain that the other Sith Lord didn't view the situation as 'unfortunate' at all.

"Still," Darth Sidious continued, smiling a ghastly smile which exposed his yellow and rotten teeth, "young Bridger and his master are both gone, and our Jedi problem has been dealt with. Grand Admiral Thrawn was at least successful in that."

"As an alien, one must make allowances for his failures," Moff Motti chimed in unctuously. "Indeed, given his limitations, it is somewhat impressive he got as far as he did. Although, we must not forget that his blunders cost us the entire 5th Fleet."

Vader turned to face the simpering bureaucrat. "And what limitations would those be?" he demanded dangerously, in his deep, booming voice. _Breathtaking intelligence? An ability to not underestimate his opponents? Respect for those who served under him? A refusal to let bureaucrats dictate the military chain of command?_

Colonel Wulf Yularen, head of the ISB, smoothly interjected himself between Moff and Sith before the situation could escalate. "Have you ever fought a Jedi, Your Excellency?"

Motti shook his head stubbornly.

Yularen had served with Vader when the Empire had been the Republic. His hair had gone completely white since then, and he had transferred out of the Navy – taking a demotion – immediately after the corrupt Republic had been transformed under Palpatine for reasons which Vader had never understood. But he had lost none of his resolve.

"Well, I have fought both beside and against Jedi, and they are almost impossible to predict and incredibly difficult to kill. The Grand Admiral's task was one which none of us here – besides Lord Vader and our Emperor – stood a chance of completing."

There was an uncomfortable silence as those in the room tried to decide if Yularen spoke too highly of traitor and terrorists.

"Be that as it may," Moff Tarkin continued, "we must talk about the consequences. The 5th Fleet has been all-but eradicated and Lothal is once more without an Imperial presence. We need a swift military response."

Vader shifted, would have spoken, but Sidious, Yularen and Tarkin all shot him a look, so he held his tongue, feeling anger rise within him.

"Yes, but would a _military_ response be the most effective course of action?" interjected Director Orson Krennic, head of the Imperial Science Division. "Or should we consider a more… _permanent_ solution?"

Krennic had been promoting his pet project – some sort of superweapon powered by kyber crystals – codenamed "stardust" for years now. Thrawn and Vader had opposed diverting so much of the Empire's resources and manpower into an entity which could be destroyed in a single strike, and had recommended the simple, but effective, solution of increasing the size of the Imperial Fleet and upgrading the ubiquitous, but undefended, TIE fighter as an alternative.

But now Thrawn was gone, vanishing completely from Imperial space due to the machinations of the Jedi.

Idly Vader wondered if Kenobi had had something to do with it. Such a strategic loss as the entire 5th Fleet and a Grand Admiral spoke of the work of his old master's devious mind.

For what felt like the hundredth time, Vader testily reminded the regional governors that, "The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the Force."

"Very true, my apprentice," the Emperor warned – Vader, not the Moffs – once more reasserting Vader's subordinate position.

The younger Sith Lord could feel the malicious glee coming off the Moffs, could fell the Emperor's satisfaction, and vowed yet again that he would destroy his master one day and take control of what was rightfully his.

He would remake the galaxy and then…then _she_ would be proud of him. He would prove to his Master…his _old_ master that he was the master then, that he had grown beyond Kenobi and was the true master of the Force.

And then, when he had complete control of the Empire, he would use his unlimited resources to find Kenobi, wherever he was hiding. The old man could not elude him forever!

Long after the meeting had ended, and Vader meditated in his private chambers, his anger and unease at Thrawn's disappearance remained. The meditation room he was in had been given to him by Sidious and was the room he had once shared with Kenobi a lifetime ago, when the Imperial palace had been the Jedi Temple. It was a blatant attempt to continuously flood him with anger as it dredged up memories of the past, but today Vader welcomed it. The anger strengthened him and cleared his mind.

The Sith Lord found his attention drifting to memory once more, to his first meeting with the strange but brilliant alien named Thrawn.

And then to his return to the Jedi Temple…

Darth Vader hung, weightless, in the bacta tank, the black and deep reds of his chamber heavy and impenetrable around him. Although nothing was left of Anakin Skywalker in this place, he could still feel an echo of Obi-Wan's presence: a glint of blue-grey eyes, the scent of Obi-Wan's infernal tea, the faint sound of his refined voice.

 _Anakin stumbled through the door of their shared quarters. Obi-Wan turned towards Anakin from where he'd been standing at the kitchen counter. He looked tired and worn, his tunic loose as he relaxed before bed, and his soft, copper hair mussed from its usual immaculate nature._

 _He also looked like the best thing Anakin had seen in weeks._

 _The younger Jedi Knight stumbled across the room and all-but fell into his arms. Obi-Wan froze for a second, startled, before his own arms slowly came up around Anakin, who released a breath and hid his face in his master's tabard._

 _After long moments in which Anakin just breathed, he tried a small laugh. "Well, I'm back."_

 _The door opened again with a snap-hiss. "Master!" Ahsoka cried, barreling into their rooms. "We were so worried! But of course, you're alright. I told Master Kenobi you'd be alright. You're always alright."_

 _She bounced with energy next to her two masters, her relief pouring from her into the Force around them._

 _Obi-Wan chuckled. "Anakin has more lives than a Sullustan moonbat."_

 _Later, after they were sat around the kitchen table with cups of Obi-Wan's spicy tea and Anakin had explained everything that had happened in the Thrugii Asteroid Belt, Obi-Wan leaned back in his chair and stroked his beard thoughtfully._

" _This Mitth'raw'nuruodo sounds like quite an extraordinary individual. I should like to meet him one day."_

 _Anakin and Ahsoka exchanged amused and long-suffering looks._

 _Obi-Wan's smile was fond as he collected their empty cups. "The Force works in mysterious ways," he reminded them gently. "We never know when someone comes into our lives and changes the course of our destiny."_

 _He reached out a hand and placed it softly on Anakin's shoulder…Ahsoka's bright, happy smile filled Anakin with warmth…_

With a gasp, Vader wrenched himself back into the present moment. Anger – _fury_ – flooded him.

And despair and loss and grief. That hollow sensation which lived permanently within his breast, that black hole of agony which threatened every moment to consume him utterly, pulsed fiercely. Ruthlessly, he fought it back, shut his mind off and blocked out all memory.

Only when his mind was somewhat quiet once more did he pursue his previous line of thought.

Thrawn was gone, just like Vader's former master and apprentice. They were in the past…and the past was best left forgotten.

End Notes: The "she" Vader refers to is, of course, Padmé. I'd absolutely love to have Thrawn and Obi-Wan meet, but I don't think it's going to happen in this story. Ah well, maybe Timothy Zahn will make my dreams come true in his new book.

Next chapter, Ezra and Thrawn come across the remains of Outbound Flight.


	4. Outbound Flight

Summary: Thrawn is confronted with his past.

Notes: I loved "Thrawn: Alliances" even with the rather annoying amount of Padmé in it, and Anakin's complete obsession with her the entire time. I wish Obi-Wan would have been mentioned more than three times in the entire book (I counted), but I adored Thrawn and Anakin's relationship and I adored Thrawn and Vader's relationship even more. Thrawn kept trying to get Vader to remember that he was Anakin Skywalker; he _admired_ Anakin Skywalker, which was mind-blowing.

Vader almost killed him so many times, lol, but Thrawn was able to appeal to his curiosity, his sense of honor and the Jedi concept of balance, and Anakin Skywalker's past trust in Thrawn. It was so subtle but beautiful and – the fact that Thrawn was written into the list of people who trickled away at Vader until he remembered he was Anakin: Ahsoka, Thrawn, Obi-Wan, Luke and Leia – it was something entirely unexpected.

Also, Anakin/Vader's authority kink was present throughout the whole book in his relationship with Thrawn. Anakin has complete admiration and trust for people who are calm, collected, brilliant and utterly certain in their beliefs, i.e., Obi-Wan, Padmé, Palpatine. And so his automatically falling in sync with Thrawn such that Thrawn came up with the strategy and Anakin executed the tactics was perfectly in character. Even as Vader he did this, almost automatically if begrudgingly. This bartender on Batuu noticed it immediately when they walked in and he called Vader Thrawn's bodyguard. Which was hilarious.

Unknown Chapter Four

The Jedi was meditating again.

Thrawn supposed the boy was actually a Jedi. His command of the Force to control these purrgil and successfully navigate the Chimaera through space showed at least some level of skill.

At their first drop back into realspace, Thrawn saw that Bridger had taken not just the Chimaera with him, but Captain Pellaeon's ISD- _Krayt_ and Captain Derros' ISD- _Memorium_ as well. All three ships were battered but serviceable, as far as the techs were able to ascertain from a quick scan.

The purrgil then dove into the Tibanna gas making up the atmosphere of the planet below them while the three ships made hasty repairs. Then the space-faring creatures re-attached themselves to the Imperial ships before Bridger jumped them all again. The boy didn't even seem tired

He still couldn't hold a candle to General Anakin Skywalker though.

Now, Bridger rested easily on his haunches, in the small crew quarters Commodore Faro had allotted to him. His eyes were closed, face relaxed, and his hands rested gently on his thighs. Obviously meditating, he didn't bother to acknowledge Thrawn's presence as the Grand Admiral stepped into the room, letting the door hiss shut behind him.

Kanan Jarrus' lightsaber rested on the bunk before him.

Academically speaking, Thrawn knew the benefits of meditation – a way to organize thoughts, process emotions, create distance so that you could objectively make the right decision without emotions – and what you _wanted_ to happen – getting in the way. The Grand Admiral had never needed such methods himself. The study of art afforded more than enough clarity and distance for his purposes, but he had been told by Commander Tano once, many years ago now, that his mind was organized differently from other beings she had come across.

This also made it harder for Force-sensitive individuals to discern his motivations and feelings on a given topic. It was one of the reasons he had been confident in presenting himself to both Emperor Palpatine and Lord Vader.

He wondered if Bridger faced similar problems and if this would prove to be a problem in their continued alliance with one another. It hadn't proved to be a problem with Anakin Skywalker, but Lord Vader had reacted differently.

Once more he glanced at Kanan Jarrus' lightsaber.

"I find it most…interesting that Governor Tarkin brought Kanan Jarrus to Mustafar – to Lord Vader – and that that was the place where the Rebel cells began to work together," he said at last.

It was a lightsaber for a Jedi who hid the fact that he was a Jedi. There was nothing special about it.

Ezra Bridger opened his eyes, unerringly finding Thrawn in the dim gloom of his room. There was no alarm on his features for the Chiss' blue skin or glowing red eyes, which seemed to disturb most humans he had met. At least at first.

Then again, all those years ago on Batuu, Anakin Skywalker had shown no alarm either. Nor had Ambassador Padmé. Senator Padmé Amidala of Naboo. Dead with their doomed Republic.

Thrawn held his gaze.

"Why is that strange?" the Jedi asked.

"The Rebel cells came together, Governor Tarkin's ship was destroyed, and the Grand Inquisitor was killed, all within full view of the Galaxy and above Lord Vader's own home."

Bridger dropped his eyes to the lightsaber again, and after a moment he smiled. It was a wistful smile, not full of triumph or malice, but almost melancholic and yet strangely happy. "Mustafar was the place where Master Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker…" He trailed off before looking up.

"Kanan said that time seemed to slow down for him in his fight against the Grand Inquisitor. That he could see exactly what he needed to do. The Force guided him, and he listened. The ship was destroyed because Kanan was where he needed to be. And the Rebel cells came together because Chopper called for help and Ahsoka was where _she_ needed to be."

Thrawn processed this, the boy's furious protestation that the Force wasn't a power to be wielded ringing in his ears. Vader – and Anakin Skywalker before him – had always wielded the Force like a weapon, not some sort of spirit guide. And the Chiss Navigators used it as a danger sense, to steer vessels along safe hyperspace lanes.

Perhaps, just perhaps, the Chiss Force-sensitives could only use the Force as a danger sense because they only saw it as a danger sense. Perhaps Anakin Skywalker could only wield it as a weapon because he saw it as a weapon?

Perhaps he was jumping to a conclusion without enough information.

"And you are now where you need to be?" he surmised.

Bridger glanced down at the lightsaber again. "Perhaps," he shrugged, and Thrawn wondered at the echo of his own thoughts. "But I think – and Kanan would probably agree with me – that the Force is trying to get _you_ where you need."

Thrawn felt an uncomfortable prickle of unease at that. The Force had never been his ally and it had never brought him anything but grief.

It had only brought grief to Anakin Skywalker as well.

His commlink pinged. "Admiral?"

Commodore Faro's voice. _Her voice was calm and certain and, perhaps, expectant._ "Yes, Commodore?"

"It looks like we're coming out of hyperspace, sir."

Thrawn looked over to Bridger, who nodded. "We will be with you shortly," Thrawn informed the Chimaera's commander, and ended the communication. He stood up from the bunk across from the Jedi's meditation mat. "Where, precisely, will we be?" he asked, a hint of warning in his voice. If Bridger thought to drop them out in the middle of a battle-ready Rebel cell, the boy would see exactly how much damage an Imperial star destroyer could deal out.

The Jedi stood up, clipping Jarrus' lightsaber onto his belt and meeting Thrawn's gaze unflinchingly. "Where you need to be, Admiral," he said quietly.

Thrawn studied his face; calm with a hint of nervousness perhaps, but no guilt or betrayal. "Then lead the way, Commander," he said formally.

When the stars finally contracted, and the ship dropped suddenly into realspace, Thrawn and Ezra Bridger were standing on the Chimaera's forward view bridge, side by side. The Grand Admiral watched as the purrgil detached themselves from the ship. Bridger reached out a hand and one of the big creatures floated over towards him, its enormous, intelligent eye fixed unwaveringly on the boy.

"Thank you," the Jedi said. His voice was sincere and grateful. "If there is anything I can do for you…"

The creatures called to one another, or perhaps to Bridger. Based on the vocal intonations of other creatures of similar size and type, it appeared to be a farewell call to a member of the…tribe. Perhaps pack?

There was a flicker of pseudo-motion and then the purrgil were gone.

The crew on the bridge were silent in the way they had which said they clearly wished to be talking amongst themselves, but the presence of senior officers made them bend their heads to their stations. The Grand Admiral could feel their attention though and form the small smile on Bridger's face, the boy could too.

Thrawn surveyed where the Jedi had led them with his hands clasped loosely behind his back. A typical binary star system with several small, rock-type planets and orbiting moons. None looked to be inhabitable.

"Commodore?" Thrawn called softly.

"Yes, Admiral," Faro said immediately. "Preliminary sensor scans coming in now. We appear to be somewhere in the Unknown Regions given the position of the stars the Nav computer was able to recognize. No known hyperspace routes or habitable planets were identified. The scanners aren't able to pick up any large settlements, satellites or probes denoting intelligent lifeforms. For all intents and purposes, this are of space looks to be completely deserted."

"Indeed," Thrawn murmured. He held out his hand for a copy of the report and quickly scanned through to find the location of known star systems. There was a faint feeling of unease growing in him. The position of the star was somewhat familiar, but not enough for him to place when he had last seen it.

The Jedi shifted beside him. "Commander Bridger, any ideas?" He asked.

"Hey, you would know this place more than I would." The young man shrugged in what Thrawn would have thought insolence if he didn't feel those intense eyes fixed on him. There was something unsettling in his gaze when Thrawn looked up to meet it. _Understanding? No, compassion perhaps. But why._

Thrawn looked back down at the star map and then, between one thought and the next, it hit him.

He didn't recognize this place because no one had ever known the exact location. The Ascendancy had sent out numerous scout ships, but no trace of the doomed vessel had ever been found.

"Scan for Republic-era world ships," Thrawn said, his voice cold and precise.

Commodore Faro looked like she was going to ask why, glanced at him out of the corner of her eyes, and then relayed the orders to all three Imperial star destroyers.

Thrawn stared out the viewport again and he could feel the Jedi's eyes on him, inescapable.

It had been a relatively low-level assignment but then again, Thrass was still young. He would scuttle the badly damaged ship, detaching his own, one-man clawcraft at the last moment, and return to the Ascendancy. This way, if anyone came looking, no one among the Aristocra would be untruthful in claiming they did not know the location of the Republic craft. What had happened was a regrettable accident, no more.

" _I can do this, Thrawn. I'm old enough now. There's no need to protect me and this will bring honor to our family."_

And Thrawn had let him.

" _Thrawn?" His brother's face was distorted over the communication signal. "It's all gone wrong." There was a figure standing next to his brother; young, human and female. "There are people aboard. Some of them survived!"_

 _The woman looked as tired and injured as his brother did. A simple metal cylinder hung at her waist. Just as it had at Jorus C'baoth's. And just as it had at Anakin Skywalker's._

" _This is a Jedi." His brother intimated the woman and there was awe in his voice that Thrawn had no heard since they were boys. "Lorana Jinzler. She says that at least fifty people survived the destruction. The ship's stuck in forward position and we can only steer it from here. I can't slow her down!"_

 _There was panic in Thrass' voice, ruthlessly held in check._

" _Where are you?" Thrawn had asked, but Thrass hadn't known and the bridge was too badly damaged to take an accurate reading._

 _The communication became erratic then._

"… _no one's ever going to know…"_

 _And the Jedi had placed a hand on his brother's shoulder. "It does not matter. All that matters is that we save them."_

" _Your life is not worth theirs," Thrawn had told his brother, coldly certain. And it was true. Thrass was rising fast in the ranks of the Aristocra. He would help Thrawn prepare their people for what was coming._

" _All life is sacred," the Jedi girl reproved him, but her eyes were as scared and lost as Thrass'._

" _Their lives is not worth yours, either, Jedi," he told her, which was also the truth. The civilians on the ship had turned against all Jedi after C'baoth's madness and megalomania were revealed._

" _They were scared," Jinzler said. "I don't blame them."_

"… _I have to do this, Thrawn. I'm sorry…."_

" _May the Force be with you, Commander Mitth'raw'nuruodo…."_

And they were gone. Thrawn never heard from either of them and he knew that they were lost.

Bridger's eyes were the same as Jinzler's; the utter certainty of a martyr. Thrawn refused to meet them.

"Admiral?" Faro's voice. "We've picked up the wreckage of six Dreadnought-type heavy cruisers and a central fuselage." Her voice sounded awed. "Forgive me, Admiral Thrawn, but how did you know it was here?"

Her voice came from very far away and Bridger's eyes were blending into those of Jinzler's and Skywalker's and even his brother's.

Kanan Jarrus' lightsaber, able to be hidden until the time was right, hung at his belt.

Thrawn turned to face the bridge. "Welcome to Outbound Flight," he said.

End Notes: Are their survivors? Stay tuned.


	5. A Knight of the Jedi Order

Summary: Lorana might only be a Jedi Knight because Master C'baoth bullied the Council into naming her one, but she would be damned if she failed now.

Ezra had no idea what he was supposed to do now. _Get Thrawn off of Lothal and find out what he's truly after_ , had been the extent of what he and Kanan had discussed. Now, his Master was truly gone, and he didn't know which step was the right one. It didn't help that Grand Admiral Thrawn really rubbed him the wrong way.

Notes: The past and the present collide. Lorana Jinzler POV and Ezra Bridger POV.

A Knight of the Jedi Order

Lorana Jinzler was a Jedi Knight.

She was. She _was_.

Even if she never felt like one.

She took in as deep and calming a breath as she could in the circumstances, winced briefly at the shooting pain coming from her right knee, and then hauled herself back up onto her feet. Around her the ship shook and roofing tiles made of durasteel cracked and slid and fell. Wiring exposed from the heavy gunfire – courtesy of the unknown alien ships – was sparking ominously and what lighting still worked flickered and sputtered and hissed.

Lorana was bleeding; she'd hit her head on something and had been thrown into more bulkheads and walls than she could rightly remember. She was also scared out of her wits, still on an adrenaline high from trying to stop Master C'baoth from using the Dark Side to kill the unknown enemy commander and been through a subsequent anti-Jedi uprising among the passengers and crew of Outbound Flight.

On a list of Really Bad Days, this was at the very top.

She put a hand to her right side to help ease the stitch in her ribs. She tasted blood in her mouth and the only thing she could hear was the erratic pounding of her own heart. _Fool. Weak, pathetic fool_ , she chided herself, the voice in her head sounding like her Master when he reprimanded her – which had been often.

She tried to push that thought away as unhelpful – Master Kenobi had praised her ability to think on her feet while he'd been aboard and encouraged her to have more confidence in herself – and tried to listen around her own heart to assess her surroundings.

 _Breathe in, breathe out._

Are there any other lifeforms around?

 _Reach out._

 _One._

Lorana opened her eyes just as a blue-skinned, humanoid male skidded around the corner. There was a blaster in his right hand and he wore some type of military uniform. Those glowing red eyes of his widened as he saw her, and the hand on his blaster twitched. In an instant, her lightsaber was in her hands, it's comforting green glow providing steady illumination in contrast to the flickering lights all around them.

For a moment they were frozen in place, the blue-skinned man with his raised blaster and the Jedi with her green lightsaber – staring at each other – as the ship hurtled through space and the lights danced on and off.

Lorana was scared and injured and she had no idea what she was supposed to do. She took a shaky breath and thought back to the lessons she had learned in the Temple, the compassion she had been taught, the self-control she had practiced. It was her job…no, her _calling_ to help those in need. She had no proof this man was an enemy, yet.

She didn't move to attack. "What do you want?" she called, hoping her voice was steadier than she felt.

The red eyes looked momentarily confused. His black hair was styled neatly, she realized, but not like a military man. His uniform as well, while resembling some type of military institution, did not quite sit on him as it would upon a soldier. His face was even-featured, even handsome, and she thought he might be younger than she had first assessed.

He said something in a language she did not know. She shook her head at him. "No, sorry, I don't understand."

He lowered his blaster. At last, in Sy Bysti, he asked, "Do you understand my words, now?"

Lorana turned off her blade and attached the hilt to her belt. "Yes, I understand this language. A little." Her language proficiency had never been anything to write home about, and Master C'baoth often deplored her slow-wittedness. "Please speak slowly," she asked. "Who are you, and what do you want aboard Outbound Flight?"

The man holstered his blaster and stood up straighter. His blue skin glimmered in many shades from the sporadic lighting of the splintering world ship and his eyes shown like kyber crystals – if any of them came naturally in red that was. "My name," he said formally, in a crisp, precise accent, "is Mitth'ras'safis, and I am part of the Chiss Ascendency. I mean you know harm, but I had no idea anyone had survived." His glowing eyes flickered down to the lightsaber at her side, and he frowned. "Who… _what_ are you?"

Lorana almost smiled. This, at least, was something she knew how to handle. "I am a Jedi," she said. "My name is Lorana Jinzler."

There was something odd about Thrawn's voice when he'd announced their destination to the crew of the _Chimaera_. Ezra couldn't place it, but the orderly, near-impassible lines of Thrawn's mind went jagged for a brief moment, as though he was in the grip of some great emotion.

Well, great or intense for him, Ezra supposed. He was even sure the Imperial Admiral felt things the same way other people did. Once he had gotten over the initial shock, Ezra's defeat of his entire fleet – the deaths of numerous Imperials and the time-consuming repairs, as well as their uncharted course through hyperspace – had garnered the Jedi no more than a slight hint of frost from the Grand Admiral.

Ezra wondered if the Grand Admiral could really have such perfect control over his own emotions or if – which was the more likely scenario – he was actually a mass-murdering sociopath who just didn't care about anything but his far-distant goals.

Whatever they were.

 _Ezra, don't let your emotions cloud your judgment. Keep an open mind and open eyes, and truth will be revealed in time._

Kanan's voice was a vivid in his memory as though his Master was standing next to him. Ezra briefly closed his eyes and wrapped a hand around the lightsaber at his waist. His Master's lightsaber. An old Jedi saying came to him then. 'Truth enlightens the mind, but won't always bring happiness to your heart.'

He grimaced and wondered if the truth about Outbound Flight would bring unhappiness to him, or to Thrawn. He opened his eyes again. "So…Outbound Flight, huh? What exactly is it?" He squinted through the forward viewports, but all he saw was a hunk of rock floating in space. It didn't look like a habitable planet and the wreckage, if there was any left, wasn't visible to the naked eye.

Commodore Faro cleared her throat. She side-eyed her commanding officer to see if he objected, but when Thrawn continued to stare out the viewport as though lost in his own thoughts, she answered Ezra's question.

"Outbound Flight was a project commissioned by the Senate towards the end of the Galactic Republic. About four years or so before the Clone Wars, I believe. 45,000 people – as well as 20 Jedi and 5,000 crew members – were chosen to board six dreadnaught-class heavy cruisers attached to a central core. This world ship was to go beyond our galaxy, to explore the far reaches of space in the hopes of finding civilization and habitable worlds in other galaxies or star clusters." Her voice held a heavy ring to it.

"What happened?" Ezra asked, already knowing the answer. He moved to stand next to Faro at the monitors, where schematics of the world ship were displayed across various station monitors.

"It was classified as a failure after all contact was lost. Somewhere in the Unknown Regions."

Ezra nodded. "Well, I guess they ran into trouble. It must have been someone pretty terrible to try and kill all those people."

That odd flare shot through the Grand Admiral again. If Ezra hadn't been monitoring him so closely since he'd boarded this ship, wasn't so attuned to the slightest deviation in his normal behavior, he never would have noticed it. But he did, and it felt like touching a live wire.

"And Jedi," he emphasized, watching Thrawn's back closely.

"You did not know them, Commander Bridger," the Grand Admiral said dispassionately.

"Nope," Ezra agreed, "but then, no one here did, right? Before our time."

Commodore Faro looked between Ezra and her Grand Admiral's stiff back. She cleared her throat. "Initial bio-scans are negative, Admiral, but it appears that the atmosphere of this planet is causing interference with our scanners." She turned away for a moment and members from the crew pit called up the results of their own scans to her.

"The ship appears completely deserted and untouched since it crashed here decades ago," she confirmed to Ezra and Thrawn after a moment. "No signs of active power, and no signs that anyone left it and tried to take one of the escape pods."

Captain Pellaeon's voice came over the comm. "Grand Admiral? There may be valuable equipment on board which is still in working order."

"Yes, indeed, Captain. That is a distinct possibility." Thrawn had still not looked away from the viewport.

Ezra had no idea what was bothering the man, but he did have questions he wanted answered. "Do you know which Jedi were on board?" he asked.

Faro shook her head. "That information as classified," she said, looking at the record. Her eyes widened. "By the Chancellor…forgive me, the Emperor himself."

"The Jedi were led by a Master Jorus C'baoth." Thrawn's even voice surprised them both. For a moment there was silence between the three of them, as the men and women below them continued to speak softly into their comm units and to each other. "I believe your Master Kenobi and…Anakin Skywalker" – he hesitated briefly over the name – "were assigned to be part of this project as well." Ezra's eyes widened. "They were recalled to Coruscant before they reached the edges of Republic space," Thrawn added.

"Master Obi-Wan was –" He cut himself off hurriedly, unable to imagine a version of events where Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker had been absent from the galaxy during the Clone Wars. And the subsequent rise of the Empire. Ahsoka would have never been trained by them. Darth Vader would have never existed –

He drew in a sharp breath.

"Fascinating how paths converge," Thrawn murmured, "isn't it? But in this case, you are right, and the Emperor recalled them both personally."

"I didn't say anything," Ezra shot back, automatically. Sometimes he vaguely suspected Thrawn of sensing the Force himself, given his propensity to know things he shouldn't be able to.

"The direction of your thoughts was obvious."

"As is the direction of yours," he shot back, childishly. He winced internally. _Oh, real mature, Ezra,_ he scolded himself, in a voice that reminded him of Sabine's. "I mean…let's go down there."

Thrawn turned at last, hands still clasped behind his back, to give Ezra a sharp look. "Any retrieval operation I decide to initiate certainly doesn't require my presence. Or yours."

"But you want to go. I can feel it." He frowned. "No…you _need_ to go." He met the Imperial Admiral's eyes firmly. He might not trust the man, or even like him very much, but everything inside him was telling him that Thrawn had to go down to Outbound Flight. And so did he.

"There are answers there," he promised. "For both of us."

Thrass – for so he had allowed Lorana to call him after she bungled his name several times – was a diplomat from a place in the Unknown Regions he called the Chiss Ascendency. He was also surprisingly calm in a crisis.

"There are fifty-seven passengers still aboard," she told him quickly, or at least she hoped she did. In reality, what she was saying in Sy Bysti probably came across much more disjointed than her Basic, and her accent was undoubtedly atrocious.

"How? How is that even possible? My bro-… _we_ scanned this ship for life-forms and found nothing." He looked around him in astonishment and she felt guilt flare in him sharply. The ship looked torn apart on the inside and Lorana could only imagine how it looked from the outside. It was no wonder he thought no one could have survived.

"They were in the central storage core," she explained, trying not to feel guilty about it. "It's reinforced, difficult to scan correctly due to the energy that crosses it from one dreadnaught to the other, and the scanners are scrambled due to the special metal which was used in its walls." She had tried to stop her Master…

No, that was no excuse. Do, or do not, Master Yoda always said. She hadn't stopped her Master and she had failed to prevent his fall to the Dark Side. But she had felt it. She knew why the enemy commander fired on their ship, and even if she mourned for the loss of innocent life, she understood it. A Jedi Master turned to the Dark Side was a terrifying thing.

But she would not fail those who had survived. "They were imprisoned there by…my Master," she admitted. "But it saved their lives, and now I have to find a way to stop this ship from crashing, and the only way to do that is by using the controls on D-1." Thrass merely looked at her. "This way," she told him.

They had to circle back around because D-2 was utterly impassible, so they went down towards the central storage unit, the ship shaking around them and mini explosions going over periodically from overloaded circuits and improperly wired panels. There was a tricky moment when Thrass lost his footing and almost plummeted down a drop of several hundred feet, thanks to the grav machines kicking in at precisely the wrong moment.

But Lorana managed to grab him in one hand and the edge of a doorframe in the other and halted his descent. She pulled herself up onto the ledge provided by the bulkhead – now tilted at one-hundred and eighty degrees – and pulled Thrass up after her. His glowing red eyes were slightly wider than usual, but all he did was nod his thanks.

She clapped her hands together, hard, and Force pushed a bunched of the detritus out of her way.

She could feel him studying her, but the curiosity was not unpleasant. It was far kinder than the anger and jealousy she had felt from the brother she had never known, Dean, when he confronted her on Coruscant just before her departure. His Force presence had been clouded black in his hatred for her, or rather his hatred of her as a Jedi. It had stung to know that she could inspire such hatred in someone she had never met, and she had tried to soothe the wound in him; the pain of it had saddened her. She hoped that young man found happiness and peace…and that the memory of her became gentler for him over time.

Thrass' regard felt more like a scholar pouring over a manuscript with an unfamiliar text. She almost smiled at the thought, but she supposed there were worse things to be called than a holopad.

"Jedi Jinzler," Thrass began.

"Lorana," she corrected him. Being referred to by that title was still not something she was used to. She winced internally at what her master…former master…would have said, but then her resolve firmed a bit. His arrogance had led him straight to the Dark Side. Perhaps a little more humility was exactly what was required in this situation.

"Lorana," Thrass agreed. He hesitated, and her attention was drawn back to him. His glowing eyes perused her face with open curiosity. She resisted the impulse to tell him they had to hurry and waited without showing impatience. At last he opened his mouth, licked his lips and said, "You called yourself a Jedi."

It was not a question.

She nodded, wondering what was wrong with that, wondering if the Chiss even had Jedi. "Did I not translate the word correctly?" she asked, after she'd thought about it. That was entirely possible, given her poor language skills and the fact that 'Jedi' did not translate directly into other languages.

Thrass licked his lips, his eyes suddenly intent upon her face. "The root words you used were those for 'air' and 'light' and 'travel,'" he said, and his voice was more intense than she had yet heard from him.

Lorana went over the translation again. "Yes, I suppose so…" she trailed off as a sudden thought struck her. She laughed, surprised to find that she still had a laugh in her somewhere. "You mean like 'Skywalker,'?" she couldn't help but ask, tickled by the notion. Master Kenobi's surly, angry Padawan, with his approval of Master C'baoth's ruthless methods and his obvious and complete adoration of his own Master, were the last things she thought of in association with the words; 'air' and 'light' and 'traveling.' She laughed again. "Well, don't tell him that, although I heard he's a fairly good pilot," she confided.

But Thrass just looked confused at her reference. Latching onto the one part of it he seemed to understand, he breathed, "sky walkers."

"Well, there's only one," she corrected. _Thank the Force for that. Two would be more than Master Kenobi could handle. More than the_ _galaxy_ _could handle._

"You can think of me as a Sky Walker if you want," she allowed, hearing the way the words were separated and sounded like a title. Perhaps the Chiss had Force-sensitives of their own, and that's what they called them. It would certainly explain Thrass' lack of fear at her abilities and her lightsaber. She would think about that at another time. Now, they had to keep moving.

Speculatively, Lorana looked up. The ship was still tilted the wrong way, gravity and time were both against them, and this trip would be so much easier if she just…jumped.

She looked over at Thrass again. She had never attempted a jump of this height while holding onto someone substantially larger than herself. She closed her eyes and reached out to the Force. Yes, it whispered.

Alright then. She would do this, she could do this because…she had to.

Without opening her eyes, she extended her hands, palms up, towards Thrass. "Do you…" she didn't know the Sy Bysti word for 'trust.' "…believe…in me?" she asked at last, hesitantly. She shook her head in mild annoyance. "No, that's not the right word. Sorry."

Thrass placed his hands in hers. He was warm, his palms calloused, and his breathing was slightly faster than normal. "I do," he said.

He sounded so certain. Lorana opened her eyes to find him watching her, with something almost like awe on his face. She swallowed quickly and looked away. No one had ever looked at her with awe before. She was ordinary, not even very powerful for a Jedi, and nowhere near as skilled as her Master…

"Lorana?"

Thrass' voice. Right, not helpful at the moment. "Okay. Thanks," she said. She dropped his hands, reached out to clasp him under the armpits, and then stretched out to the Force. It flooded through her, singing a song louder, purer, more triumphant, than any she had heard before. She took a deep breath, let it fill her…and she jumped.

"Can all Jedi do that?" Thrass asked, somewhat breathlessly, several seconds later. They were at the bulkhead door which lead to the narrow passages separating D-6 from D-1. Thrass peered recklessly over the edge, looking back down the way they had come. Lorana resisted the impulse to grab him and pull him back from the edge.

She laughed instead, sounding somewhat dazed even to herself. "Most Jedi would have done that a lot more gracefully than I did," she said, shaking her head. They had reached where she had aimed without a problem, but she had miscalculated a bit and they had ended up slamming into the walls and almost tumbling back off the narrow ledge again.

Thrass shook his head, and when he looked over at her a wide smile split his face. It turned his rather severe features unexpectedly boyish for a moment. He murmured something in his own language, and then translated for her benefit. "Brilliant," he said. "That was brilliant!"

Lorana couldn't help the feeling of pleasure that filled her at his words. She met his eyes for a moment and then ducked her head, unable to bear what she saw in them anymore. She cursed herself for the warm feeling on her cheeks and tried to will the redness away. She had received so few compliments, it was hard to take one. "We're not there yet," she said, and held out a hand to him, pulling him up after her into the passageway.

They would have to crawl the rest of the way to reach D-1.

Ezra, Thrawn and Captain Pellaeon stood just inside the darkened airlock on D-3 and breathed in the stale, musty air. Around them hung loose, long-unused wires, broken and disintegrated circuit boards, loose floor and ceiling tiles, scattered crates and boxes, and the evidence of blaster fire.

There were no bodies, for which Ezra was grateful.

Behind them, the Imperial detachment in charge of equipment recovery, moved carefully through the doorway.

"The design of the ship attached to the other airlock looks very similar to those employed by the Chiss, Grand Admiral," Captain Pellaeon said quietly, and Ezra's estimation of the man went up by several notches. He had noticed the other ship, seen that it was unusual, but hadn't bothered to look any closer than that.

"So, it is, Captain. Your powers of observation are improving," Thrawn said calmly.

Ezra could feel faint unease coming off him. "Why would a Chiss ship – an _old_ Chiss ship – be here?"

The Grand Admiral was silent. The other men and women spread out and began to scan and pick through the various crates and barrels lying around the ancient dreadnaught. Thrawn, hands clasped behind his back, watched them dispassionately. Finally, somewhere, someone found a light and flicked it on, illuminating the dusty, unused space around them in a faded, yellow glow.

"There was a rumor going around the Imperial High Command, many years ago," Pellaeon began, sounding cautious, "that the Emperor raised an alien so high in the ranks because he had already proven his loyalty to the Empire many years before."

Thrawn's emotions spiked again and at last Ezra understood. His eyes widened, and he couldn't keep the horror from his voice, or the hand from his lightsaber. "It was _you_ , wasn't it? You're the one who destroyed…" he waved a hand around him, "this entire ship, _killed_ tens of thousands of innocent people!"

The other imperials were watching him now, Captain Pellaeon looking alarmed and a hand drifting towards his blaster.

For a moment, Ezra was unsure whether or not he would ignite his lightsaber and strike the Grand Admiral down. The Force resounded with the terrified cries of thousands of people, their lives extinguished in a fiery explosion caused by a man who saw them as only numbers in a game.

Then…

"Yes," Thrawn said quietly, his back still to Ezra. "I killed them." And Ezra's anger almost made him miss that there was grief in Thrawn's Force presence, grief Ezra could feel swimming just beneath his tight control. "It was not my intent, but it proved to be out of my control."

Ezra's hand, still on his lightsaber, wavered. _Ezra, think,_ Kanan's memory challenged him. His Master usually turned out to be right. At last, sounding somewhat strangled, he said, "Like on Batonn?"

The silence was telling. "What do you know of Batonn?" His voice was a warning, as dangerous as thin ice

Ezra's hand was clenched so tight around his Master's lightsaber that he thought he might crack the hilt. "Kanan said that it was an anomaly, that it didn't fit the pattern of your past engagement, and he thought that…perhaps someone else got involved." He shrugged and tried to take his eyes off Thrawn's back. The man was so blasted hard to read. "Or failed to follow your orders."

 _Like with the interdictor over Atollon_ , he didn't say out loud. He knew Sabine and Zeb would be shaking their heads at his recklessness, his constant needling of an Imperial Admiral who held all the power in Ezra's currently precarious situation. But Ezra had a gut feeling that if he didn't get Thrawn to see him as someone to respect – even just a little – their relationship would never improve, and the reason why the Force wanted them both in the Unknown Regions would remain a mystery.

Ezra would not fail. Kanan and Master Obi-Wan were counting on him to do his part.

Thrawn half-turned to take in Ezra's uncertain presence behind him. "Perhaps I misjudged your Kanan Jarrus," he said simply, but some of the ice was gone from his voice.

"Yeah, Kanan saw a lot," Ezra returned. _Which is the only reason you're still alive_ , he added belligerently, and silently, in his own head.

Thrawn watched him for a moment, those glowing red eyes impassive. "Come, Commander Bridger. There are other things to see." And he headed carefully around the strewn detritus of the abandoned dreadnought and towards one of the half-open bulkhead doors.

Ezra and Captain Pellaeon – who left a quick word with the next ranking officer – exchanged a glance and followed him.

Thrawn led the way down downwards towards the central core of the abandoned ship. This part was half buried under the hard ground of this planet, Ezra knew from his quick glance at the scans aboard the _Chimaera_. He had no idea why the Grand Admiral felt an urge to start his search of the ship there, but he seemed to know where he was going, so Ezra contented himself with bringing up the rear of their odd little party, his lightsaber – _Kanan's_ lightsaber – casting blue light to illuminate their path.

Captain Pellaeon, for all the years he had – amply demonstrated by his bushy, white mustache – proved to be both spry and possessing quick reflexes, and Thrawn seemed to have the physical stamina of a warrior, for all that Ezra often thought of him as an armchair military commander. The three of them climbed and skirted, crawled through, under and around, various pieces of machinery and parts of the ship, in silence save for the hum of the lightsaber.

After a quarter of an hour, after Ezra may have almost accidentally sliced Captain Pellaeon's head off when he'd lost his balance on a slippery, dusty, partially-rusted bulkhead door, the white-haired star destroyer captain gave a rueful laugh. Even as he eyed the lightsaber with caution and stepped further out of Ezra's reach.

"You know, I was good friends with the former Admiral Yularen during the Clone Wars," he began conversationally.

"Who was that?" Ezra asked, Force-lifting a huge beam out of their way. Captain Pellaeon gave him a small nod of thanks but Thrawn merely frowned and said nothing, his thoughts still seemingly far away.

"He fought with your Anakin Skywalker," Pellaeon explained, his keen old eyes taking in the badly disguised sudden interest on Ezra's face and Thrawn's momentary stillness. Yes, Ezra would do well not to underestimate the man just because he seemed old. Just look at Rex; old people could be dangerous.

"Yes," Pellaeon continued, and Ezra had a feeling that he was enjoying himself. He glanced over towards Thrawn to see if the Grand Admiral had noticed the same thing, only to find those glowing red eyes already upon him, a quirk of a blue-black eyebrow and a small, exasperated shake of the head confirming Ezra's suspicions that Thrawn had noticed it as well.

Was he really so easy to read?

"He had a lot of respect for Skywalker. And for General Kenobi as well."

"You fought in the Clone Wars?" Ezra asked.

Pellaeon nodded, swinging his legs over several smashed crates and hopping over them with relative ease. "About a year into the conflict I was assigned to the task force led by Jedi General Aayla Secura."

At Ezra's confused frown he added, "Twi'lek Jedi Master. Favored bold and unorthodox tactics. Got along quite well with General Skywalker, I'm told." He grimaced a bit. "Sometimes Yularen and I would get together back on Coruscant and…discuss…our respect Generals' various reckless maneuvers."

Ezra mulled that over, mentally substituting 'discuss' for 'complain about' and noticed Thrawn's eyebrow rising even higher, though he still said nothing. "What was General Kenobi like?" he asked. Ahsoka's master's master had been respected and admired by everyone who talked about him and Ezra sometimes couldn't reconcile the gentle old man he had met out in the desert with the fierce, cunning and charming hero of the Clone Wars.

"Kenobi was the strategist while Skywalker was the tactician," Pellaeon said, unhesitatingly, navigating another turning. "He was the diplomat to Skywalker's warrior. He generally liked to follow a carefully constructed plan in order to minimize causalities and deal the greatest amount of damage to the Separatists, while Skywalker would just jump right into a dangerous situation and come up with an orthodox solution on the move."

Pellaeon's smile, in the blue light of Ezra's blade, looked dangerous. "But don't let that fool you. I've never seen anyone improvise so quickly during a battle gone wrong as General Kenobi. He could be just as reckless as General Skywalker when the mood struck him." He shot both Ezra and Thrawn an amused look. "And that apprentice of theirs was just as bad. I heard a rumor she survived the war. As did General Kenobi."

Neither Thrawn nor Ezra answered him.

Ezra thought about what Captain Pellaeon said about Master Kenobi, and about the gentle man who had saved him and Chopper, the wisdom in his clear blue eyes, the chances he had given Maul to not fight him, and the unhesitating way he had drawn his lightsaber and cut the Sith Lord down when that had failed. "Yeah, I could see that." He remembered Rex's and Ahsoka's stories and wished he'd heard more of them. Kanan had told him everything he remembered about Master Billaba's and Master Windu's exploits, but they were long gone now, and Master Kenobi was still alive. So was Ahsoka. "I wish I could have seen them fight together," he said, more wistful than he had intended.

Kanan and Rex, and even Hera, had gone on about how, together, Master Obi-Wan and Anakin Skywalker were unbeatable. Given how Obi-Wan utterly destroyed Maul back on Tatooine, and how powerful and scarily-capable Darth Vader was, Ezra believed it.

"They sound like they were quite a team," Thrawn said, his voice very even. They were his first words since they had left Dreadnaught-3. "Once," he added, studiously neutral.

Again, Ezra wondered just how much Thrawn knew about what happened to the Jedi and the Republic. Even Ahsoka didn't know the whole story, and those who did – which probably included Senator Organa – weren't telling. Or at least they were telling Ezra.

Pellaeon let out a surprising chuckle. "It's surprising how often the past seems to catch up with us," he mused. "Sometimes in places we never thought to find it." He nodded at the ship they were slowly, but steadily, moving through.

"And sometimes the past is better off dead and buried, Captain," the Grand Admiral said, a distinct chill in his voice.

Ezra thought about secrets kept and which weren't his to reveal. For once, he realized, he and Thrawn were in complete agreement.

They rounded another corner and Ezra began to notice something odd about the place they were passing through. It wasn't anything he could put his finger on, but there was something…

He slowed down, trying to put a finger on what was bothering him.

Pellaeon and Thrawn slowed down and turned when they realized he was no longer behind them. "Jedi Bridger?" Pellaeon asked.

Ezra frowned and shook his head. "I don't know what it is yet, but something's wrong."

Thrawn's expression was more ambiguous. "Have you noticed the dust, Commander Bridger?" he asked, he inquired conversationally, but in an extremely low tone.

Ezra's eyes darted to the side, the blue of his lightsaber moving in an arc around him as he inspected the various boxes stacked off to one side…

Stacked off to one side.

His eyes widened, and his gaze shot back to Thrawn's. The Chiss' eyesight, which could see in the infrared, had obviously noticed something Ezra and Pellaeon had not.

"There is no dust," Pellaeon said slowly, hand already on his holster.

"And those crates and boxes are stacked neatly off to one side. Like someone came and cleaned up!" Ezra announced breathlessly.

"Yes," Thrawn agreed and his tone was speculative. "We are not alone done here."

Ezra heart lurched and Pellaeon's hand dropped to the blaster holstered at his side. "Jedi Bridger," he asked calmly. "You didn't sense anyone?"

The truth was, Ezra hadn't even been looking. He had been so sure that everyone would be long dead. It had been decades after all…

 _Listen. Observe,_ he reminded himself. _Never assume you have all the answers!_ A foolish, rookie mistake. Kanan wouldn't be impressed.

He stretched out to the Force, searching carefully for any life forms, vaguely wondering why the _Chimaera_ 's sensors had failed to pick them up. He frowned. There was something there. Very faint. No, there. _There!_

Somewhere close by there came a little giggle. Thrawn and Pellaeon spun, blasters drawn in their hands as they searched for the sound in the darkness. "No, no!" Ezra cried, pushing their blasters down towards the deck with the Force. Ezra kept his eyes closed and shuffled forward slowly. There was a child somewhere close by, probably hiding behind one of the boxes. Female, _human_ he thought. And definitely Force-sensitive. Yet he could only feel her faintly, as though she was masking her presence. How did she even know how to do that?

He caught a glimpse of a stray thought.

– _pretty_ –

He opened his eyes and looked once more at the blue-white glow of Kanan's lightsaber, remembering how he had felt the first time he ignited the blade and the song from the kyber crystal burst forth in the small, cramped room of a space freighter. It had seemed like something from another world, like something from a story or a legend.

"Yes," he agreed softly, trying to reassure the child by making his voice as gentle as possible. "It is beautiful, isn't it? It's called a lightsaber and it belonged to…" he swallowed roughly, "someone very dear to me."

There was a soft shuffle from behind some boxes and Ezra caught a glimpse of a small face hesitantly peaking around the corner. "Are they gone?" And the voice was young, tiny, full of curiosity but not at all afraid.

Ezra wondered how such a small child – she didn't sound any older than four – could know so much about death as to calmly ask if someone was 'gone'. He knelt down on the metal floor beneath his boots so that he was more at eye level with her and kept the lightsaber's glow illuminating his own features. He tried to explain Kanan's death in a way that wouldn't alarm a child, and something Sabine used to say – a Mandalorian saying – came to him then.

"Not gone," he said. "Merely marching far away."

The child seemed to contemplate this for a moment. More of her head came into view, including a mop of messy brownish-colored hair. A small nose wrinkled. "That's silly," she said at last. "Why can't he come back?"

Ezra smiled. "Who said anything about a 'he'?" he asked her, already knowing that she must have picked up an image of Kanan from his mind. She didn't seem to understand his question, so he tried another. "How are you making yourself small?" he asked her.

"I'm always small," the girl said, and she finally stepped out from behind the boxes in order to prove her point.

Ezra could feel Thrawn and Pellaeon behind him very consciously not moving in any way. The little girl was aware of them, but she didn't seem alarmed as she slowly walked towards Ezra. She seemed fascinated by, and drawn to, Kanan's lightsaber. She was even smaller for her supposed age than Ezra expected, dressed in a slightly dirty dress of faded blue. Her hair was messy, and her face was dirty, but her eyes were keen and bright and curious. A pair of boots, very poor boots with several holes in them, covered small feet as she moved forward one step at a time until she was looking directly into Ezra's eyes.

"Yes, you are small, little one," he agreed, smiling at her. The crocked smile he received in return, several teeth still missing, made his heart clench painfully with a strangely protective feeling. She didn't look like she was starving or being terribly mistreated, but she was too small and skinny for her age and there was something of a scared animal in the back of her eyes. "It's alright," he told her, reaching out to her in the Force to let her see his intentions. "I won't hurt you, and neither will my friends." He waved back at Thrawn and Pellaeon, turning to bestow a ferocious look at the two Imperials in case they got any ideas.

Thrawn was watching him like he was an interesting specimen to research and Captain Pellaeon had on a gentlemanly smile. Their blasters had vanished back into their holsters.

Ezra turned back to the child. "I'm Ezra. What's your name?"

"Evlyn," said the girl, suddenly shy as she peaked around Ezra to inspect Thrawn and Pellaeon. Thrawn's unusual skin tone and glowing eyes didn't seem to alarm her, which was a relief. If the Chiss had destroyed Outbound Flight all those decades ago, at least their descendants didn't know what Thrawn's people looked like.

"And you can see me, right Evlyn?" Ezra continued. "I feel like light to you?"

The little girl nodded, reaching out to pat him on the cheek, as though she could touch the glow that surrounded Ezra in the Force.

"I don't see you like that. You look like shadow or mist, almost not there. How do you do that?"

Master Kenobi had felt like that on Tatooine – almost not there at all – until he had ignited his lightsaber against Maul, and then he had blazed across the desert like a supernova. Ezra had never seen anyone that bright before, not Kanan, not Ahsoka, not even Master Yoda.

But Evlyn, even though she was untrained and very young, should still have shone in the Force. Her presence flickered in and out of existence, only able to be seen if you had the skill and training, and moreover were actually looking for her.

"I'm hiding," Evlyn confided, as though this was a normal occurrence.

"Hiding from who?" Ezra asked, feeling a little shiver of unease crawl up his spine. To hide yourself in the Force – to _need_ to hide yourself in the Force – didn't sound like something a child should have to do.

"From whom," Thrawn murmured behind him, and Ezra rolled his eyes. He could feel Thrawn's and Pellaeon's alertness begin to increase again, their hands drifting towards their weapons.

"They'll take me back and lock me up again," the child confided, her dark eyes huge in her pale face even as she grabbed Ezra's sleeve. "Please don't let them, Ezra. I don't like it there! The other children cry, and I can't feel anything in that room." She shivered.

Ezra stood up, suddenly decided. "We won't," he promised her, holding out an arm. After staring at him curiously for a moment, Evlyn jumped up and he caught her, holding her carefully and balancing her on his hip. She put little arms around his neck and stared over his shoulder at Thrawn and Pellaeon.

"Ezra," she whispered, still entirely audible. "Your friend is blue."

Ezra laughed and even Pellaeon smiled. Ezra turned to find Thrawn studying them both with his glowing red eyes. "Yes, he is," Ezra agreed, and Thrawn's eyebrow shot up so quickly that Ezra wanted to laugh again.

"Good," Evlyn said. "This way you can always find him."

Captain Pellaeon smothered a laugh and Thrawn closed his eyes wearily, an expression of strained patience crossing those usually inscrutable features. "Evlyn," he said through compressed lips and closed eyes, his voice gentler than Ezra had ever heard it.

Evlyn ducked her head into Ezra's shoulder before mumbling, "Yes?"

"Can you see the other children in that room…like you can see…Ezra?"

Evlyn shook her head against Ezra's shoulder. "I can't see anything in that room," she said, in a little voice that rang strangely flat for a child her age.

Ezra, Thrawn and Pellaeon shared a glance and Ezra tightened his arms around the child. Kanan had once described being cut off from the Force as feeling both cold and blind. The Force was life, Ezra thought, remembering one of his first lessons.

"It sounds like whoever survived has taken any Force-sensitive children they have and…locked them away," Captain Pellaeon said slowly. For an imperial, Ezra thought distantly – remembering Inquisitors, and Zeb and Chopper holding tiny babies who felt like little stars in the Force – he sounded remarkably disgusted by the idea.

"How many people are there, Evlyn?" Ezra asked her, but there the child was no help.

"Lots," she answered, and Ezra grimaced. He could feel the questions on the tip of both Imperials, buzzing just under the surface as they all decided whether to wait and call for reinforcements from the _Chimaera_ , or to continue onwards, but Evlyn got there first.

"Are you lost?" she asked in a tiny voice, lifting her head and curiously looking between the three intruders.

"Why do you say that, child?" Thrawn's voice must have been soothing to her, for she was now staring at the Chiss as though he was the most fascinating person she had ever met.

"No one ever comes here," she said, as though the answer was self-explanatory.

Ezra thought rather wryly of his own separation from the Ghost crew, Thrawn's separation from everything he had been trying to build in the Empire, and even Pellaeon's journey from Grand Army of the Republic to Imperial Navy to…wherever Ezra and the purrgil had brought them to. He supposed they were all lost, in a way.

"Yes," he told the little girl. "We're a bit lost." The Force prodded him gently. _Center yourself_ , Kanan said. _Be mindful, but empty. Be present in this moment alone_. "Can you help us?" he heard himself ask.

Evlyn's toothy smile was brilliant in the dim glow of the humming lightsaber. "I know other people who are lost," she confided. "They've never been found. I'm the only one who knows about them." Her smile became a child's pride in an accomplishment. "Because I'm brave."

 _Yes, you are_ , Ezra thought, amazed at the resiliency of her, still so hopeful and trusting despite what sounded like the mistrust and fear of those around her. "Show us?" he asked her.

"Commander Bridger." Thrawn's voice held warning and disapproval. "This is not our mission."

But Ezra walked forward with the child in his arms. "You wanted to find answers, didn't you?" he asked, feeling the muted convoluted tangle of emotions the Imperial Admiral was currently going through. "You said that despite an extensive search, the Chiss Ascendency never found Outbound Flight. Why not? And how did these people survive? Before we face them, I want to know what happened here."

Captain Pellaeon nodded, his white mustache blue in this lighting. Like the whales on Agomar. "I agree with Jedi Bridger, Grand Admiral. More information sounds like exactly what we need."

Thrawn's ability to come to the correct conclusion based on only a cursory glance at the evidence came back to Ezra. He remembered the disaster on Atollon. "Do _you_ know what happened here?" he demanded accusingly.

Thrawn hesitated and Ezra scowled. "I…suspect," the Grand Admiral admitted. "I do not know."

Lorana and Thrass stared around at the main bridge of Outbound Flight in dismay. There was no way their original plan was going to work. The missiles fired by the unknown Chiss commander had targeted the main fuselage and, of course, the bridge, with catastrophic results.

The viewport had been destroyed, the emergency durasteel plating which had extended over the damage now blocked any view of path they were travelling. Proximity alarms were blaring, but they were hard to hear over the sounds of other alarms, detailing fuel loss, systems failure, structural damage, loss of life support and even malfunction of the few remaining escape pods.

Lorana moved around sparking wires and the innards of the weapons control and steering systems to attempt a system check at the main control board.

It was dark.

Thrass moved over and began to inspect the nav computers. "Do you know how Republic ships operate?" Lorana asked him, as she ducked under the control board and ripped open the paneling underneath. She wasn't a great mechanic, but she had been taught basic repairs at the Temple, and Padawan Skywalker had taught her a few more tricks while he'd been aboard. Perhaps she could figure out how to restore power to the control board.

Perhaps she could do that much.

"There should be some similarities between these designs and the ones I've seen from the edge of your Wild Space," Thrass assured her, voice muffled as he fiddled around with a nav computer that at least had a flickering screen.

The proximity alarms were still blaring and Lorana had no idea how close they actually were towards a collision with some planetary or star-like body. She took a deep breath in and let it out very slowly. Empty yourself of all outside distractions, she reminded herself, taken back to Master Yoda teaching her and her classmates as younglings in the Temple. You are here in this moment alone.

"This moment," she whispered to herself. She began sorting through wires. She could do this.

They restored the power…but it was not enough.

Outbound Flight was headed directly towards a collection of small rock-like planets, or perhps moons. "The Redoubt," Thrass said, moving up to stand besides Lorana as the holoprojector sputter to life and showed their current trajectory.

"Jedi Jinzler?" A male voice, frantic, calling over the damaged com system. Dillian Pressor. One of the crew who had been thrown by C'baoth into the central core due to his disagreement with the Jedi Master's orders.

"Yes?" Lorana answered, but he could not hear her.

"Took the first escape she found, I warrant," snapped another voice, next to the man on the com speaker. Chas Ulliar. He had been the most outspoken against C'baoth and the Jedi. "She left us here to die. Faithless and arrogant, like the rest of her kind."

Thrass might not have understood the words of the remaining crew members, as they shouted and argued through the com system, but he seemed to understand the tone. He frowned and shook his head.

"They have every right to mistrust me," Lorana told him quietly. "Master C'baoth betrayed their trust. He was…wrong," she admitted out loud, for the first time. She said it again. "He was wrong." And something in her lightened, a sudden release of tension at the knowledge that she had been right in her reservations. She should have trusted her own instincts more, as Master Obi-Wan said.

"Jedi Jinzler," Pressor said, "if you can hear us, we're heading towards D-3. We're heading towards D-3. Over and out."

Lorana's heart lurched. The plan had been for her and Thrass to crash the ship with D-3 towards the ground. They would set the nav computer and control systems, get back to the survivors in the central core, and then Thrass would take his small ship – attached to D-3 – and go for help. The terrible condition of D-1 meant that the autopilot was no longer an option. Lorana would have to stay here to manually pilot the ship. This wouldn't have been such a problem if the surviving members of Outbound Flight had stayed in the central core like she'd asked them to.

But now they were going towards D-3, which meant that the only way she could crash the ship was with D-1 on the bottom. She wasn't going to make it.

She had feared that when the time came for her death, that she would be filled with a cowardly unwillingness, a desire to look for any other option to avoid it.

Instead, all she was filled with was a calm certainty. She could still save them.

"You can still make it," she told Thrass hurriedly. "Get to D-3 as fast as possible, take your ship and go get help for them."

He looked like he wanted to run, like he wanted to sprint in the other direction as fast as possible, but something held him stubbornly in place. "You don't have to do this alone," he told her. "I don't think they deserve you dying for them."

"Alone for a Jedi is sometimes the only way," Lorana told Thrass quietly. "Go now, and live."

He stared at her for an endless moment, those glowing eyes seeming to take in everything about her, as though memorizing her every feature. At last he reached out and gently touched the back of her hand. "It would be to no purpose," he said. "You will need at least two people here to make sure the ship maintains its present position and course."

"I can hold all the instruments together through the Force long enough," she argued, feeling the seconds tick away and unable to look away from his burning gaze.

Thrass didn't look away from her eyes either, fiery red meeting cool grey. "Perhaps. But you don't have to," he told her, swallowing quickly around a voice gone hoarse, "because I'm not going anywhere." He turned away then and took his place at one of the nav computers, his continued presence as reassuring as a hug.

"It seems that both of us, Jedi Jinzler, will die for your people."

"They will live," she told him.

"Yes, they will live."

There were two desiccated skeletons in D-1, the dry air long-since turning them to nothing but bones. One of the skeletons bore the remnants of a Chiss uniform and the other…the other carried a lightsaber.

Ezra gasped.

"They died fighting each other," Thrawn surmised, his tone sounding almost…dead. It was hard to tell with the Chiss, but he felt almost as cold in the Force as Vader.

Ezra let Evlyn down gently, as Pellaeon found a light switch that actually worked, and then dropped to his knees besides the skeleton of someone who had once been a Jedi. He reached out a hesitant hand and brushed the dulled silver of the lightsaber. A jolt ran through him and he could feel the kyber crystal, sleeping quietly, come awake at his touch with a little trill of joy.

 _Her_ lightsaber.

Ezra got a clear picture of long, dark hair and sad grey eyes, the determination that sang through the Force at her decision…at _their_ decision, while the Force sang a song of stark courage in a minor key.

"No," he breathed, "they didn't." He picked up the lightsaber and cradled it with care. "There is peace and…and purpose here. They died together," he looked around him at the dust-covered bridge, the destroyed equipment and battle scarring, feeling the echoes of their desperation. "Saving those that remained."

His gaze met Thrawn's. "They died as heroes," he said with finality. This woman, who might forever remain unknown to him, had died as a Jedi.

Those red eyes stared at him for a long, long moment, before dropping to the lightsaber in his hands and to the child who crouched at Ezra's side and was reaching small hands to brush the old weapon. He turned away from them abruptly and made to walk out of the room, back stiff and his thoughts louder than Ezra had ever heard them.

The skeleton of the Chiss – male, from what Ezra could tell – stopped him. He stared down at it for a silent moment, while even Evlyn waited with anticipation, before murmuring something in a language Ezra didn't know. Then he left.

"Jedi Bridger," Captain Pellaeon said, his voice cautious. "Do you know what that was all about?"

Ezra shrugged. "No idea," he admitted. He glanced back down into the bright eyes of the child. "But whatever it was about," he quietly added, "I think Thrawn needed to know it."

When they exited back into the passageway, Thrawn was quietly speaking on his com to Commodore Faro. "Yes, I'll need a full detachment of the 501st," Thrawn said. "Inform them that they are to set their weapons to stun and meet us at the central core. Make sure they are aware that there are civilian survivors aboard, but that they may be hostile."

Evlyn slipped her hand into Ezra's. "Why not use your Death Troopers?" Ezra snapped. "It seems that they would be more up for this sort of challenge." He really didn't trust the Grand Admiral – he was an Imperial for Force's sake – and his decision to use armored soldiers on a populace so isolated and undoubtedly fearful of any outsiders wasn't going to end well.

"We don't know if they have weapons, Jedi Bridger," Captain Pellaeon said. He was making faces at Evlyn behind Ezra's back, making her giggle joyfully, like a child her age was supposed to. He straightened up when he caught Ezra looking at him, appearing only mildly abashed. "We don't know their attitude towards the Republic, or the Empire, towards the Chiss" – he nodded towards his commanding officer – "and, forgive me Jedi Bridger, but given their apparent proclivity towards locking up Force sensitive children, we can only assume that they hold a decidedly negative view towards Jedi." Pellaeon looked towards Thrawn to see if he arrived at the correct conclusions. "We are only three, and therefore decidedly outmatched."

Ezra frowned and looked down the hallway – a crushed, labyrinthine obstacle course – and felt Evlyn watching him. He thought back to all of the impossible things he had seen the Ghost crew do, the awe he had felt for them, before he'd truly become one of them. It had been a long time since he'd looked at what a group of extraordinary people could do from an outside perspective.

"No," he disagreed. "What I see are a Clone Wars veteran, a brilliant tactician and warrior who has worked with, and fought, Jedi, and…me."

The two Imperials were watching him with surprise on their faces, even Thrawn who usually showed so little. He felt uncomfortable, hopeful they didn't think him utterly stupid but not really believing it. He dropped his head and scrubbed awkwardly at his hair. "Anyway…"

Evlyn tugged at his hand. "What am I?" she demanded excitedly.

Ezra smiled at her, he couldn't help it. He remembered looking at Kanan the way she was looking at him now. He wanted to tell her that she was the reason he was going to do this, but he thought that was putting too much pressure on a child her age. He tried to think of something more appropriate. To his surprise, it was Thrawn who answered her.

"You are a Sky Walker," he told her gravely. "You are our guide through the unknown."

The words sounded like more than a former Jedi Hero's last name to Ezra. They were a title and a reference that he didn't understand and could not ask about at the moment. It was clearly a story for another time.

Evlyn met the Grand Admiral's eyes solemnly. "Yes," she said quietly, accepting his words. "Come." And she tugged on Ezra's hand until all three men began to follow her.

The little girl led them back down the shaft separating D-1 from the central core. This time, though, instead of moving carefully along passageways on the outside, she led them down well-lit, clean, but old and worn corridors to the very center. The only sound was that of their footsteps, and the faint clink of the two lightsabers at Ezra's belt. They rounded another corner to face yet another corridor of dull, battleship grey durasteel, except at the end of this particular corridor was a wide, black, reinforced blast door. And either side of the door stood two young men, obviously guarding the entrance.

Their eyes flickered from Evlyn up to Ezra, then to the white-haired Pellaeon and the blue-skinned Thrawn. Their eyes widened. One of them swallowed and made to take a step back, while the other raised his blaster to point at the four of them. Their fear flowed into the Force, but they were too far away, 50 meters or more, and so Ezra dropped a hand to his lightsaber.

"Stop it, Doran!" Evlyn shouted, her small voice suddenly snapping with authority.

The one called Doran – a pimply-faced youth with tan-colored skin that looked sickly-yellow in this lightning – briefly wavered at this. The other boy, the one who had stepped back upon seeing them, now raised his blaster as well.

"Keep walking towards them, Commander Bridger," Thrawn said quietly.

Ezra did so, feeling Pellaeon and Thrawn at his back. Neither of them felt particularly worried and he wondered yet again how much they knew about Jedi.

"Have you ever aimed that weapon of yours at another person, son?" Captain Pellaeon asked quietly, speaking to the second boy, whose weapons was wavering wildly as he pointed it at them.

"Stop, or we'll shoot," Doran said loudly, trying to sound convincing.

Ezra let go of Evlyn's hand, raised his own towards the two boys and pulled with the Force. Their weapons were torn from their grips and caught effortlessly by Thrawn and Pellaeon. The boys' eyes widened and now the fear was filled with something else as well, disgust and loathing. "Jedi," spat Doran.

Ezra raised his hand again and concentrated. Kanan had always been better at this particular skill than he. He called on the Force. "You will let us pass and then forget you had ever seen us," the told the two of them. Their loathing of Jedi was so strong that for a moment Ezra wasn't sure his Force persuasion was going to work, but then with a ripple, the nodded and stood aside for Ezra, Evlyn, Thrawn and Pellaeon to pass.

"Cool," breathed Evlyn, but Ezra, who could still feel their hatred of his kind crawling all over him like something slimy, just grimaced a bit.

He hit the door release, and as it silently slid open, he stepped through.

What happened next probably took all of twenty seconds.

The room was far larger than Ezra expected. It would easily have fit the entire _Ghost_ , and it was wide open. There was a small kitchen in one corner, a row of beds in another, and lavatories in another. Everything was dull and grey, and the Force was filled with a numb sense of despair and listlessness.

Across the wide room, a group of human men and women stood, perhaps two dozen of them. They appeared to be gathered around a group of children. A grizzled old man, his face furious, had his hands around one of the children's throats. The boy could have been no more than ten.

"Disgusting," the old man snarled into the boy's wide and fearful face, picking him up by the throat and shaking him. "If you ever do something like that again –"

The door hissed shut behind them and the Force was muted even further, but it wasn't gone, and Ezra felt righteous anger burn through him as the old man dropped the crying boy and then raised a hand to hit him.

Ezra threw his hand outwards, the Force leaping from him and freezing the old man in place. "What the kriff is going on?" someone cried.

"Chas!" cried someone else, towards the old man.

Ezra flicked his wrist and threw the old man aside, not as hard as he would have liked, and watched as the group of people turned around and caught sight of the three strangers in their midst.

"Evlyn?" said a woman. "Who are these people?"

"That's one of them!" an older woman cried.

Ezra could feel Evlyn's fear from just behind him, heard Thrawn and Pellaeon's quickened breaths, saw the wide eyes of the children, the Force sensitive children, in their too-thin faces. In one motion he unhooked Kanan's lightsaber from his belt and ignited the blade, it's blue blade bursting into life with a resounding snap-hiss as he pointed it towards the men and women across the room. He performed the most common opening move in Form Three and ended with the blade held upright before his face.

In the dead silence he said, "Step away from those children. Now."

No one moved. Then… "Jedi!" Someone shouted, and the blasters he had noticed on all of their hips were drawn and pointed at him. They fired…and the room was filled with light.

Ezra blocked the bolts and tossed them aside, feeling Pellaeon, Thrawn and Evlyn ducking for cover in the small kitchen area. He Force pulled two blasters away from people, shoved another person across the room and watched as one of the young women tried to move the children back towards the beds and out of the immediate line of fire.

He was so angry that he felt sick, but he pushed that feeling aside as unhelpful. Even if he had been tempted to return the blaster shots back to their original owners and start killing them, the weight on his leg from the Jedi woman's lightsaber would have stopped him. All those years ago, she had given her life so that these people could live. He wouldn't let her sacrifice be in vain.

He called his lightsaber to his left hand, igniting the glowing green blade and hearing its joy at being used once more.

And then he moved. Jumping, twisting, turning, blue and green sabers twirling around him, he deflected the rain of blaster bolts with all the skill Kanan and Ahsoka and Master Billaba's holocron had taught him. He sliced through blasters and kicked aside adversaries, shoving them with the Force and trying to end the conflict with as little injury as possible.

In a matter of seconds, it was over, and he had his lightsaber at the old man's throat.

"Commander Bridger!" Thrawn's voice, sharp and authoritative. A warning.

"Anyone else would kill you for what you did to these children," he said, and he could still feel a powerful anger in him. It had always been that way when he saw innocent people suffering. "But I won't," he said. "I want you to remember that a Jedi saved your life all those years ago, when you crashed into this world." He leaned closer to the man, the green blade of the Jedi woman's lightsaber, glowing and humming as he pressed it closer to the old man. "And that a Jedi spared your life today."

He turned away and met Evlyn's bright eyes, as she stood between Thrawn and Pellaeon halfway across the room. Troops from Thrawn's contingent of 501st were pouring through the door, their white armor gleaming and their weapons pointed carefully at the survivors.

But Ezra only had eyes for the child. The awe in her gaze, echoed in her suddenly bright Force presence, reminded him of himself, all those years ago when Kanan came into his life, and he knew he had made the right decision. He was a Jedi, and one day he would train Evlyn – and all of these children – and if they wanted, they would walk the Jedi path too.

End Notes: I grew to adore Lorana while writing her. And the compare and contrast between her and Ezra – both new, unsure Jedi Knights in extreme circumstances – was a great challenge too. Jorj Car'das doesn't seem to have survived the re-canonization of Thrawn's story, so I had another way for Lorana and Thrass to meet and communicate. Slight hints of Lorana/Thrass anyone? And yes, Evlyn is older here than she was in the EU, but I wanted her in Ezra's story. I tried to parallel Ahsoka and little Hedala's relationship in the "Ahsoka" novel with Ezra and Evlyn's relationship here.

Did anyone catch the parallels between how Kanan declared himself a Jedi – igniting his lightsaber and protecting the Wookiees – and how Ezra declared it – igniting his lightsaber the same way and defending the children? I hope so!

This chapter grew to be much longer than I ever anticipated. Yes, Cortosis Ore was built into the central core of Outbound Flight. I'm so glad it's canon again. I also included references to "Thrawn: Alliances", and how the Chiss referred to Force sensitives as Sky Walkers. I didn't outright explain it in this chapter – there really wasn't time because it felt so filled with other things that I didn't want to stop the action for more exposition – but if anyone thinks it needs to be explained, I might add it into a future conversation between Thrawn and Ezra. I have a whole backstory planned for Thrawn and Thrass – and their intense relationships with Jedi – so stay tuned.

Back to Thrawn's POV in the next chapter. More trouble ensues and Thrawn and Ezra find themselves stranded on a hostile planet. Thank you so much for all of your reviews. I think I fixed all the references to Thrawn's Fleet – now it should all be the Seventh Fleet – so thanks for catching that.


	6. Between the Stars

Summary: Thrawn has a vision for the future which nothing and no one will get in the way of; not himself and not Jedi Knight Ezra Bridger. But first he has to get home.

Notes: Thanks so much for your patience waiting for this next chapter. Real life has been kicking my arse. Still, onwards and upwards.

Between the Stars

The ISD _-Chimaera's_ massive sublight engines rumbled low and steady as the ship idled in space. Grand Admiral Thrawn contemplated the awe-inspiring sight that hung outside the forward viewport as he let the familiar voices of Commodore Faro and Senior Science Officer Ash'vla move over him.

Outside the viewport, the magnetoscreens filtered out the extraordinary amounts of radiation currently bombarding the _Chimaera_ 's shields, only slightly detracting from the beauty of the view, hung a binary system of neutron stars. Twin fiery balls of pure, extremely dense energy, both of them red and black and gold, with rays of white light bursting out into space like sunbeams. Around the neutron stars swirled a mass of debris and dust, held in place by the combined gravitational pull of the twin bodies, and between them, where their mass intersected was a swirling, wreathing storm of particles – what astrophysics called a stellar wind – filled with immense energy.

At steady intervals a pulse of purse, brilliantly-bright energy, which appeared to be mostly made up of gamma radiation, burst forth from the twin neutron stars in an ever-expanding circle like ripples on still water.

It had taken several weeks to discover a star system out at the edges of charted space that met the specific requirements Thrawn was looking for. These neutron stars were the closest in mass to one another that the trio of star destroyers, with their advanced astronavigational computers and elite science officers had been able to find, and Thrawn was well please with their result.

The twins were so close to one another in mass as to be nearly indistinguishable. Good.

"Have you measured the time elapsing between gamma-ray flares?" Thrawn asked, interrupting Faro's interrogation of Ash'vla's security procedures for the upcoming test, no doubt to the later woman's relief.

"The pulsar is every 12.08 seconds," she said immediately, without the need to consult her datapad.

"And the radius of the magnetic field?"

These particular neutron stars had a powerful magnetic field and were known as magnetars. The magnetic field of such bodies, magnified by their binary orbit and overlapping gravity and mass fields, were the strongest of any known object; strong enough, in fact, to distort the very shape of atoms.

In fact, Thrawn was counting on it.

"And are you sure your calculations are accurate, Senior Science Officer Ash'vla?" Commodore Faro demanded with asperity, dark eyes boring into her subordinate with all the skepticism and suspicion of a seasoned naval officer towards a pencil-pushing academic.

"As well as can be verified, ma'am," Ash'vla said, straightening up even further but evincing no apparent annoyance or injured pride at Faro's question.

Faro frowned at this answer and Ash'vla winced and hastened to clarify at the Commodore's impatient handwave.

"Given the parameters requested by the Admiral," here she shot a quick, slightly nervous look towards Thrawn, "the lack of substantial testing in this area, and our limited timeframe, I am reasonably certain the amount of gravity and radiation in a single discharge won't just ear the ship apart."

There was a slight pause as both Faro and Thrawn digested this analysis.

"Wonderful," Faro said dryly.

"I am confident everything will work out in a satisfactory manner," Thrawn assured her. "Now, Officer Ash'vla, return to your work station and begin preparations."

"Yes, sir." Ash'vla saluted and departed.

Faro nodded to him and returned to her task of overseeing final arrangements for the _Chimaera_ 's jump into the theoretical.

Thrawn returned his gaze to the viewport, calculating possible outcomes. He had spent years discreetly accumulating research regarding possible astronavigational straight-ways, or slipstreams as his people had named the theoretical possibility; first because he had had no desire for the ISB and subsequently the Emperor to become aware of his interest, and second, because the data, although numerous, was inconclusive and very raw. Furthermore, his own basic training in Chiss astronavigation was extremely different from the ways Republic – and later Imperial – scientists worked and even described the universe.

The bulkhead doors to the _Chimaera'_ s bridge hissed open and out of the corner of his eye Thrawn saw the Jedi enter, the small figure of the girl, Evlyn, following close on his heels.

Thrawn did not turn to acknowledge the boy Jedi until he came up beside the Grand Admiral.

"What's going on?" the former Rebel asked.

At least he had the decency to keep his voice down. The crew was uneasy enough without the true purpose of their experimentation being revealed. Undoubtedly filed as deserters to the Empire by now, stuck somewhere out in uncharted space, deep within the Unknown Regions, and recently having taken on both survivors from the former Republic and, worse, a Jedi who was allowed to wander the ship at will, Thrawn was well-aware that every man and woman aboard the _Chimaera_ was undoubtedly feeling a little…at sea.

For now, the full contingent of three imperial star destroyers, the pride of the Seventh Fleet, operated under the firm command of their captains and appeared to trust that Thrawn would get them back to Imperial space and home. He wondered with a detached sort of interest what their reactions would be when they were informed that the Grand Admiral had no intention of ever returning to the Empire.

He would need something to motivate them in their new mission.

Thrawn, hands clasped behind his back, continued to contemplate the twin neutron stars as he answered Bridger's question. "Travel through the Unknown Regions is extremely difficult due to its largely uncharted nature. However, it also presents certain other…difficulties." He turned to find the Jedi intent on his words, the girl several paces away standing quite still and staring at him with huge blue eyes.

He turned away from her again, continuing with his explanation. "There are more black holes, exploding star clusters, supernovas, rapidly expanding maws and distortions from dark matter here in the Unknown Regions than have been observed in the rest of the galaxy combined."

This didn't appear to get quite the reaction that he was hoping. He frowned in thought.

"Have you ever made the Kessel Run, Commander Bridger?" Commodore Faro asked, from her place next to the station for the aft sensor array.

Bridger shook his head, but his eyes widened. "No, but I've heard stories from…people who have."

Faro's face was grim. "Well the fate that befell those pilots who failed to stay on those charted courses will be what happens to us if we remain out here much longer."

"Kanan said that the Unknown Regions was the most astronomically active place in the galaxy." Bridger unconsciously fingered the lightsaber at his waist. "And that means unstable forces."

Thrawn inclined his head. "One of the difficulties," he continued, beginning to pace slowly up and down the length of the bridge, "is our lack of ability to simply navigate into the Chiss Ascendency's Redoubt without the assistance of -s" here he shot an ambiguous look at Bridger, " – a sky walker. And, despite your stunt in bringing us to this place, we have none aboard."

He may have trusted Lord Vader to possess the abilities of a fully-trained sky walker but then he had fought beside Anakin Skywalker and seen what the man had been capable of. He did not possess the same level of faith in Ezra Bridger, whose own master had been a mere Padawan when the Order fell. Kanan Jarrus and Ezra Bridger may have called themselves Jedi Knights. They may have possessed some skill with a lightsaber. But Thrawn could not see how they could have received the training Anakin Skywalker had, with the Order fallen and no one left to teach them.

From his own knowledge of Rebel movements, they had not spent enough time in either Ahsoka Tano's, or the elusive Obi-Wan Kenobi's, to rectify this.

He would not trust three entire star destroyers, and all their crew, to the dubious abilities of a partially-trained Jedi.

"This experiment is meant to rectify that."

Thrawn became aware that Commodore Faro had come up beside Bridger and that her lips had thinned to all but non-existence. She was resolutely staring straight ahead of her with a rather strained look upon her face. And the Jedi's blue eyes were amused.

He looked over his shoulder.

There was a shadow behind him, a small shadow and one that mimicked his every move. Evlyn, the Force-sensitive human girl they'd rescued from Outbound Flight, was slowly, and very deliberately, striding up and down the bridge in his wake, hands clasped behind her back and copying Thrawn's every tilt of the head, every inch of military posture and every pause exactly.

She noticed he had stopped and was staring at her. Thrawn raised an eyebrow and she sent him back the largest smile he had ever seen, her young face entirely innocent.

Someone in the crew pit smothered a laugh.

"Commander Bridger," he said quietly.

Bridger's eyes were still suspiciously bright. "Come here, Evlyn," he called and the girl obligingly scampered past Thrawn and took Bridger's outstretched hand.

"Admiral!" A voice called, and Thrawn, Bridger and Faro turned to see Chief Science Officer Declan powering towards them, his ungainly stride meaning that he constantly looked on the verge of over toppling. He held out a datapad towards Thrawn. "We've made our final calculations," he said excitedly.

Thrawn put a hand to his chin as he glanced over Science Officer Declan's shoulder at the fluctuation graphs. They flickered and update every .04 seconds, providing new information across his screen almost faster than he could process it.

Evlyn put a hand on her chin as well and frowned.

"Engineering?" he called, and Bridger reached out a quick hand to cover Evlyn's mouth before she could say the same thing, her tiny, childish voice an echo of the Admiral's own.

Commodore Faro turned quickly away from them and stared fixedly out the forward viewports, lips twitching.

"Holding stable, Admiral," came the Wild Space accent of Chief Engineering Officer Mackintosh, the roar of the sublight engines almost overpowering her voice. "Fuel reserves at maximum, secondary s-coils in place, tertiary coils on standby, the temporary patch on the alluvial dampeners is holding and the ion array is recognizing the cyclotron resonance 97.3% of the time."

"Very good," Thrawn said. "Time between vortex discharge?" he inquired.

"Three minutes, thirty-three seconds," someone called.

Commander Bridger's eyes still held amusement. Thrawn looked down and found Evlyn once more keeping pace with him, hands clasped behind a rigid back, stalking back and forth with a terrific scowl on her face. He did not look like that.

Thrawn could see the carefully controlled mirth on the crew members' faces, Commodore Faro's extremely neutral expression and looked back at the Jedi to find the boy watching him quietly.

He sighed and looked down at the child. She stared back with bright, awed eyes, and no sign of mockery on her face.

Still amazed by his blue skin then. He wondered what she would think when she met other Chiss in the Ascendency. She would think him special no longer.

"Little one," he said, as gentle as he knew how. "A ship's bridge is no place for a child. Please hold Commander Bridger's hand and he'll escort you back to your friends and family." He turned and then froze when he felt a small hand slip into his. He looked down and Evlyn smiled up at him, big eyes wide and hopeful. It was almost as if she was attempting to reassure him.

For a moment this human child looked so much like…

The orderly lines of his mind – the careful, painstaking work of many years – when jagged for a moment. Pain, regret, loss cut through him in a moment so visceral it felt like a physical wound.

Evly gasped, her eyes filling with tears, and Thrawn jerked his hand back from hers. Force sensitive, he reminded himself, and felt as swell of anger he tried to will away. His thoughts and feelings were his alone, not the purview of everyone in a 10-kilometer radius, Jedi or no.

"Come, Evie," Bridger said gently, drawing the child away. "I think it might be time for you to rejoin the others."

The girl went without protest.

Thrawn could feel Bridger's damnable eyes on him. His mind settled back into its usual patterns and channels. "That would be best, Commander Bridger," he said evenly, his voice as in control as always.

The girl murmured that she could find her own way, but she turned back to look at Thrawn as she passed through the bulkhead doors. Her eyes were too old for such a young face. And he had seen those eyes before.

He turned away. "Helm, bring us about 45 degrees to starboard." The nebula areola around the two class-B neutron stars flared purple and blue and gold across the forward viewports. Beautiful. But deadly. As so many beautiful things were.

As the ship moved into position, Captain Pellaeon from the ISD- _Krayt_ hailed them. "I wish you luck, Admiral Thrawn, but I would like to express my reservations over this venture one last time," the brisk voice said over the comm system.

"Duly noted, Captain." Thrawn had always encouraged his officers to speak their minds. This was one way in which he differed from Lord Vader and most of the Imperial High Command.

"We have emergency teams on standby."

"Thank you, Captain."

Pellaeon signed off in a way that let the entire _Chimaera_ 's bridge know of his disapproval.

This would work. His calculates were correct. He remembered his last trip into the Redoubt and towards the edge of Ascendency-controlled space. Anakin Skywalker had been with him and the _Chimaera_ then.

"Almost in position," Faro said. "Cut the sublight drives. Auxiliary power only."

No, not Anakin Skywalker. Lord Vader. The man had been adamant on the distinction for all that Thrawn sometimes saw little difference between the two – and less and less as their journey went on. They had fallen back into their old patterns so easily…

The ship gave a sudden lurch, crew members jerked off their feet and crying out in sudden alarm as a dozen sirens went off at once. Thrawn staggered, trying to catch his balance and would have fallen if the Jedi hadn't put a hand out to grab his elbow, steadying him. He nodded at the boy, sparing a brief thought for Evlyn and hoping she was firm on her feet as well.

He opened his mouth, ready to request a status report, mind already shifting through the likely variables for their failure when a strange humming sound filtered through his awareness – a sound both like and unlike the normal sublight engines of a starship idling in space.

He frowned, glancing out the side viewports.

Crew members began glancing as well and then moving over to their nearest windows, abandoning stations as they noticed the particles of light which danced around the _Chimaera_ , encasing her. As though a prism had been struck with the sunbeam from a yellow star, bands of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet stretched aft and astern of the Chimaera for as far as the naked eye could see, with the Imperial star destroyer directly in the center of it.

"No," Bridger said quietly, directing Thrawn's attention back to him. "We're not exactly…right." He was concentrating, eyes closed and one hand outstretched as he reached out to his mysterious Force for…what?

Thrawn did not know. He shook his head. "Helm," he called, and the woman snapped to attention. "Calculate our position relative to the bands of visible light."

Thrawn could see in more spectrums than humans of course, his vision stretching into the infrared. But he could not see into the ultraviolet. He suspected, however, that for the purposes of this experiment, only the normal visible spectrum mattered. If he was wrong, he would reassess, but the most obvious solution was usually the correct one in his experience.

"If theoretically the band stretched north-south," the helm called back, fingers tapping rapidly over the keys as she input numbers, "we're pointed 2.863 degrees north, north-east of relative north."

 _And a straight line is the quickest route between two points_ , Thrawn heard a voice from his past echo once more. Perhaps it was because he was going home.

"Course correction, please," he said, activating the comm system. "All hands, brace for acceleration."

He did not look at Bridger. The Jedi could have told him to angle the ship slightly up and to the right, but Thrawn preferred exactitude and he did not especially enjoy relying on Force-users, his long association with Anakin Skywalker the sole exception.

Such reliance was what had led the Chiss Ascendency into the quagmire in which they now found themselves. Such reliance was why he now risked his ship and his crew in untested ventures into the realm of astrophysics and astronavigation.

The alarms still barred, the helm called out excitedly and Commodore Faro's voice called one final command down to engineering as the stars elongated to white comet trails around them –

– and the _Chimaera_ jumped to hyperspace.

"So, what have we learned," Captain Pellaeon summarised later, stroking his mustache, after the shock and alarm of the _Chimaera_ 's sudden jump to lightspeed – and even more sudden re-appearance amongst the fleet some hours later – had abated.

Commodore Faro snorted. "That I'm going to get a heart attack before I'm forty," she said, eliciting some small chuckles around the room.

Ezra waited for Thrawn's anger at such levity. His experience with Imperial officers was that they didn't take kindly to any sort of jibbing from their underlings.

Thrawn, however, merely smiled politely and waited for the Chief Science Officer's report.

'Promising,' was the overall consensus. 'Needed a lot of refinement,' was a close second. 'Could end up with us torn apart, with our atoms unable to be reconstituted on the other side of the…slipstream,' was the underlying opinion of every military officer present, although voiced on this occasion by the incorrigible Commodore Faro.

Chief Science Officer Declan straightened up as though personally offended and Thrawn's smile was complicated as he said, "Assuredly not, Commodore."

Which, Ezra supposed, could be taken several different ways; one of which was that they were all going to die much sooner than expected doing whatever mysterious thing Thrawn was currently up to.

Ezra had tried everything he could think of over the past few days to get the Admiral to open up to him about the Far Outsiders, the threat that was coming from Beyond, and how the Admiral was planning on beating them, but to no avail. Thrawn was notoriously close-mouthed about anything involving a personal nature and Kanan's suspicions of the former Imperial's goals notwithstanding, Ezra didn't have a lot to go on.

The Force sang strangely in this part of the galaxy, he was now responsible for a group of Force sensitive children and hostile former Republic citizens who were resolutely anti-Jedi, he was alone, and he was surrounded by Imperials; so he was not in the best mood.

 _Patience_ , the memory of Kanan whispered to him, but it was hard to have patience when he was constantly on edge and feeling like he was rapidly running out of time.

He tried to think of what Ahsoka would do, letting Officer Declan's report of their current findings was over him; she was a spy, wasn't she? She was used to getting information from people. Would she demand answers? Sneak into Thrawn's office and look through his things? Ezra sighed internally. He simple didn't know. He hadn't seen enough of Ahsoka as Fulcrum to say. Hera would know, perhaps, but neither Hera or Ahsoka was with him now.

He wondered what they were up to, how Hera was coping without Kanan, and where Ahsoka had gone. She would have had to lay low from the Rebellion after Malachor, because Ezra had though her dead – had pulled her out of the past in the Temple on Lothal.

Ahsoka was too smart to mess with the nature of causality. She would have gotten off Malachor and disappeared until after Ezra vanished into the Unknown Regions. But how and where?

He thought of Master Obi-Wan again, sitting beside him in the middle of the Tatooine desert, night fallen and Darth Maul hunting him.

 _The truth is often what me make of it._

Had Ahsoka stayed with Master Kenobi that entire year?

He could picture them both, meditating together. He wondered if they had sparred. Now that was something he would have liked to see; a match between two of the best Jedi the Order had ever produced.

He hoped Ahsoka had been on Tatooine, for both her and Obi-Wan's sakes. Ahsoka had adored Master Kenobi even more than Kanan had and Ezra couldn't count the number of times he'd caught his Master watching Obi-Wan's last message to the survivors of the Purge.

Kanan had once told him that before Master Billaba took him as her Padawan, he had studied under Obi-Wan Kenobi for a while, and Ezra had no trouble believing it.

He thought of Obi-Wan's words again, about truth and our perception of it. He wondered if Thrawn's truth was in fact true or merely the Grand Admiral's perception of it, perhaps warped by time and loss and service under Palpatine.

He had a sinking feeling that he wasn't going to find out what Thrawn was truly up to until the man told him. If he told him – for he doubted even the Emperor had been able to discover the Chiss' true motives.

Thrawn would not have lasted long if he had. Palpatine didn't seem like the sort of tyrant who allowed underlings to have hidden agendas of their own.

He was shaken from his rather unproductive thoughts by the Grand Admiral saying, "Thank you for your presence at this meeting and now I need to confer with my Captains."

Pellaeon, Derros and Faro exchanged looks but the rest of the gathering got to their feet with a scraping of chairs and filed out the door.

At the last moment Ezra turned back to find Thrawn's glowing red eyes fixed on him with an unreadable expression.

He felt a prickle of unease as the door hissed shut between them.

The Imperial Grand Admiral and his officers discussed their defection from the Empire. They all knew they couldn't go back. Their failure on Lothal, their subsequent kidnapping by a rebel Jedi, a kid, precluded it. The High Command would – at best – demote them to head a survey station at the edge of Wild Space and at worst publicly execute them for being in league with a Jedi.

"Are we in agreement then?" Thrawn asked.

And only Pellaeon urged a different course.

Thrawn returned to his quarters and sat down heavily in his chair, hands steepled before him as his gaze went unfocused and he pondered the various possibilities before him.

Several paths lay before him at this moment, with only one more guaranteed than the others to produce a result favorable to his desired outcome. But it presented difficulties, some more personal than others, and Thrawn was unsure as to the wisdom of assigning importance to these difficulties. Or not.

There had been several times in the days past that he'd missed Rukh, his long-time bodyguard, and none more so than today. The Noghri had a way of cutting through the intellectual thicket Thrawn occasionally found himself in and getting to the heart of the matter.

Rukh had been assigned to protect the Grand Admiral by Lord Vader himself, who had won the allegiance of the Noghri of Honoghr in a way that Thrawn was still unclear about.

He grimaced, hands slowly massaging his temples. Anakin Skywalker yet again. He had not thought of the man so frequently since the last time they'd worked together, several months ago now, during which Lord Vader made it clear that Anakin Skywalker was dead, but he suspected his constant association with Jedi as of late was bringing the man more and more into his thoughts.

 _The sky was dark with a smattering of stars sprinkled upon it, like diamonds in the ruff. That had been a saying of these people which Thrawn had learned today._

 _Around him the tall grasses which hid he and his companion, rustled in a slight, southern breeze. Strange birds called from the trees and small animals rustled in the underbrush. Thrawn did not think there was any fauna on this world which would attempt to eat them this evening, and tried to relax._

 _From a distance came the sounds of merriment and the backwash of sublight engines heading up towards space. Black Spire Outpost on Batuu had a surprisingly active night life for a minor outpost at the very edge of the Republic's Outer Rim Territories._

 _Thrawn and Jedi General Anakin Skywalker were attempting to catch some rest before heading back to the location where the woman, Duja's, ship had been located. For some reason, the Jedi wanted to see it but Thrawn had convinced him that a journey through an unknown forest was best kept to light of day._

 _Now the small astromech droid which seemed to follow Skywalker everywhere was powered down beside them, and Thrawn lay comfortably on his back, but Skywalker himself was still seated, his head just visible above the grasses, arms folded across drawn-up legs as he watched the Outpost in the distance._

" _What do you look for?" Thrawn asked him. There were no threats that he could see._

 _The Jedi started in surprise before looking down at him. There was…a smile on his face. It was the first Thrawn had seen, for the man had been frantic and on edge since the beginning of their association, concerned for the well-being of his…Padmé. The Republic Senator._

 _Skywalker looked around him at the darkened landscape, the sea of grasses, the towering petrified trees behind them, and the strange, chaotic, vibrant Outpost before them. "I was just thinking of what my master, Obi-Wan, would say about this place." There was a smile in his voice as well, fondness and amusement and something else there – wistfulness perhaps – that leant a thousand extra meanings to his words which Thrawn could not understand yet. Skywalker leaned back to stare up at the petrified forest at their backs, the trees a landmark for hundreds of leagues around. "He would be fascinated by everything."_

 _The grin spread across his face. "He would probably say something pretentious like, 'See Anakin, how life springs up unexpectedly in the most surprising of places.'" His voice had taken on a posh, Republic Core accent, and Thrawn understood him to be mimicking the tones of this 'Obi-Wan.'_

" _Your Master?" That surprised Thrawn. He had been sure slavery was outlawed in the Republic._

" _Jedi Master," Skywalker explained. "A Master of the Jedi arts. He is my teacher, my mentor. He was." He frowned a bit, but only in thought, not annoyance. "He still is," he admitted. "Obi-Wan is one of the wisest people I know."_

 _His shoulders drooped a little. "I wish he was here right now," he admitted. "He always knows what to do."_

 _His fears for Senator Padmé fell upon him again like a dark cloud and Thrawn knew that such fears would only muddle the Jedi General's judgment. He sought for a distraction and found it easily. "This 'Obi-Wan'," he said, his voice stumbling a bit over the unusual name. "What is he like? You fight with him in this 'Clone War'?"_

 _The boy visibly brightened again. "Oh yes," he said quickly. "We're a team. We've gotten into the most ridiculous scrapes. You wouldn't even believe it. Once there was this time that Ventress tricked us into infiltrating this unused droid factory on Fiorn, and Obi-Wan and I got trapped in a rancor pit, as usual…"_

 _And just like that he was off._

 _Thrawn learned more of Republic military strategy from listening to General Skywalker's account of his and his master's misadventures than he would have from a thousand Republic briefings and reports. He also gained a healthy respect for the talents of Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi. The man had a gift for long-term strategy._

 _When Skywalker was done though, Thrawn had one question. "You did not seek revenge against this Ventress for what she had done to you? Done to your Master?"_

 _Skywalker's eyes flashed and he shifted uncomfortably in his spot among the grasses. "Revenge is not the Jedi way," he offered, but the anger in his voice made it clear that he wished to have exacted revenge against Ventress, perhaps only entirely for Obi-Wan's sake. There was an odd mix of worship, respect and…possessiveness in the boy's voice when he spoke of the older man._

" _Forgive me, General Skywalker," Thrawn murmured. "I am not a Jedi, and your ways seem most unusual to me."_

 _Skywalker's smile was complicated. "Sometimes they are strange to me too," he admitted, surprising Thrawn greatly. After a moment, the General added, "Restrictive."_

 _Thrawn knew he was thinking of his Senator Padmé again by the way his metal hand curled into a fist. Fear for her safety was taking hold of him once more. The astromech droid beeped softly._

" _So why stay?" Thrawn asked, genuinely curious but also seeking to distract the Jedi from his thoughts. From all he had read and heard, Jedi warriors had to have the deepest commitment to their Order and way of life. Yet anyone with eyes to see could tell that Anakin Skywalker had an attachment to this Republic Senator – one which had caused him to go AWOL from his duties to his Order and the Republic in order to find her._

 _If it wasn't duty which held Anakin Skywalker to the Jedi, then what was it?_

 _His question seemed to have done the trick for the other man relaxed again, studying Thrawn intently in turn with bright, blue eyes. "I am a Jedi," he said simply._

 _Thrawn wondered if he truly believed that or if the words had become mere routine. War had a way of making even the strongest commitments fray._

 _Skywalker shifted again in his spot among the grasses, restless or as though small insects ran over him. "Besides," the Jedi admitted, "I could never leave Obi-Wan."_

" _Your Master?"_

" _My friend," Skywalker said firmly. The slow smile that spread across his face this time was rueful, fond and resigned all at once – as complicated as everything else about the Jedi was. Thrawn, whose people were stoic and imperturbable by nature, found the emotions chasing across the boy's face as fascinating as they were overwhelming. "And he'd never last long without me. He gets into too much trouble on his own."_

 _The astromech droid made a rude noise to express its thoughts on this statement and Skywalker burst out laughing. "Well he does!" he protested. "No one else sees it. They think he's respectable High General and Master Kenobi – and he is – but Obi-Wan's just as reckless as me. He has no care for his own safety at all. He needs me to look after him!"_

 _Thrawn couldn't help his own small smile. The young General sounded earnest and the strength of bond he obviously felt for this other Jedi, this Obi-Wan Kenobi, was strangely humbling. He wondered what the Jedi would say about Thrawn's own mentor, Admiral Ar'alani of the Chiss Defense Force, and knew they would probably never meet._

" _I have no doubt that the two of you make a formidable team," Thrawn said, instead, and Skywalker's smile turned proud._

" _Oh we do," he assured the Chiss, a threat and a promise both._

" _I shall be sure not to get in your way," Thrawn murmured, watching the other man turn restless again. "Will you sleep tonight?"_

 _Skywalker grimaced. "Can't," he admitted. "Obi-Wan would say that I'm unbalanced, and he'd probably be right." He sighed. "I suppose I'd better go meditate." He shuffled up and resettled himself some little distance from the Chiss, folding long legs under himself and resting hands on knees. Thrawn could see him take deep, even breaths as his eyes closed._

" _Don't worry," Skywalker said, without even looking at Thrawn. "I'll keep watch."_

 _For some reason, Thrawn believed him; his last sight before sleep came of the Jedi seated among the waving grasses of night-darkened Batuu as he slowly centered himself._

Thrawn found his fingers restlessly tapping against the Jedi Temple Guard's mask and made himself stop.

Ezra Bridger was not Anakin Skywalker and Thrawn's relationship with one should not affect the other. That was illogical and unhelpful in the present circumstances. He forced the past away.

He would do what must be done and face the consequences of his actions as he had always done.

Thrawn stood on the bridge and the Jedi stood beside him. The boy had his arms crossed, a frown of concentration on his face as he watched the _Chimaera_ 's crew run through one final check of all systems, and Kanan Jarrus' lightsaber hung, as always, at his belt.

Thrawn studied the weapon for a moment. It was of a cruder design than Anakin Skywalker's had been, able to be broken down and appear as no more than a handful of spare parts.

He had seen how effective in combat it was though, and for the young Caleb Dume, alone and on the run from every authority, to have created such a thing spoke of both the ingenuity and resilience which had informed his character.

He wondered if Ezra Bridger had ever learned his Master's true name.

"Are you sure this is a good idea?" the Jedi murmured.

"It is the only way," Thrawn said for what felt like the tenth time. "You are too inexperienced to guide one star destroyer through hyperspace jumps unaided, let alone three, and your perrgil have not returned. We do not have the time or resources to travel through space until we happen to stumble upon a recognizable hyperspace route – let alone the danger that would present – and I do not have access to Chiss hyperspace maps and, unfortunately for us all, this is one region I have not made extensive study on."

"So this is our best shot," the Jedi summarised.

"Correct," Thrawn said. "The science is sound."

The boy still looked uneasy. "What if we hit something."

Theoretically, given the nature of this path through space, that should be impossible. The only problematic part would be exactly when – and potentially how – they could drop back into real space. The numbers added up most of the time…which wasn't reassuring to anyone.

Thrawn, however, merely said, "Unlikely."

Commodore Faro stepped up beside Thrawn. "The final checks are complete, Admiral. Captain Pellaeon and Captain Derros have also confirmed likewise."

There was trust in her face and stance – trust in him and his judgment, despite the strain in her voice. He hoped he would not let her down.

He raised her voice for the benefit of the entire crew. "Then let us begin."

Ezra could feel the moment the Chimaera slipped _between_. There was a sudden lurch as the ship adjusted to the transition, a rapid acceleration that felt a bit like his brain had slammed to the back of his skull and his teeth ached as he clenched them and fought a vicious feeling of disorientation…

…and then nothing.

Although the ship's gravity still worked, it felt a bit like they were floating in a void, a sort of insubstantiality to their bodies that made everyone talk louder than they meant to and place their feet more decidedly upon the floor as they walked than was strictly necessary.

Even Thrawn, usually imperturbable to the point of utter mystery, looked uncomfortable.

Perhaps it was the silence, though, that was the worst. Ezra knew the ship's engines were on, the monitors on the consoles of the bridge pinged and beeped as usual, and the intercom worked just fine – but all he could hear from outside the ship's hull was a deadly, deathly silence.

He was surprised, despite all the assurances of the _Chimaera_ 's science department, that they were still altogether aboard a ship that was recognizable as an imperial star destroyer. When Thrawn had explained that the gravity around a neutron star bent atoms well, he had expected to be torn apart at the seams.

He knew there was an explanation for why they had not been – Declan had definitely explained it to him – and that it probably had something to do with gravity – the ship's own gravity well projectors – but he couldn't remember it at the moment.

He closed his eyes and reached out for the Force, looking for the moment.

It could have been minutes or hours before he found it. "Now," he said, without opening his eyes, his voice coming from very far away.

It was in the distance that he heard Thrawn's calm, cool voice say, "Bring us about thirty degrees starboard, Commodore, and reverse thrusters."

And with a violent shudder, the _Chimaera_ dropped back into realspace. The _Krayt_ and the _Memorium_ flickered into existence as well, flanking Thrawn's flagship.

The impression of the three massive ships appearing in synchronicity must have been both impressive and terrifying. The half dozen vessels ahead certainly thought so, for Ezra saw them – after a split second's hesitation – swing around to face Thrawn's warships, fighters launching to intercept, as a voice crackled over the com, sharp, peremptory and female, demanding something in a language Ezra couldn't even identify.

The sudden smile that curled the corners of the Grand Admiral's mouth was the most genuine one Ezra had ever seen from him, and the warmth that filled the man in the Force for a moment took the Jedi completely by surprise.

"Hail the approaching ships," Thrawn ordered, glowing red eyes fixed on the dark grey vessels, with their unusual placements of engines and a design that somehow reminded Ezra of the perrgil.

"Channel open, Admiral," a junior lieutenant called a moment later.

"Admiral Ar'alani," Thrawn said, in trade language of Sy Bysti. "This is Commander Mitth'raw'nuruodo, heading the Imperial Seventh Fleet. I seek an audience with the Aristocracy and I bring a gift."

There was a pause, the strange, rounded, almost-bulky ships still heading straight towards them, and the static over the com channel crackled.

"Grand Admiral Thrawn," the woman, apparently this Admiral Ar'alani, said in highly-accented Basic that was almost unintelligible. "It has been a long time. The Chiss Defense Force welcomes you home."

End Notes: This chapter was getting out of hand, so I stopped it here. I wanted to add the subsequent scenes between Thrawn and Ar'alani and then Thrawn, Ezra and the Aristocras but I guess we'll save that for next time! Stay tuned.

I hope you all enjoyed the brief sojourn into astrophysics theory at the beginning. Sorry if it was a bit much!

Yes, I'm going with the fact that Ezra being raised on Lothal, deep in the Outer Rim, means he has a passing understanding of Sy Bysti and one which was expanded upon under Kanan's tutelage. Also, Admiral Ar'alani returns!

Some familiar faces will be making an appearance soon.


	7. Interlude

Summary: A brief glance backwards at what the Emperor is up to. Surely, he wouldn't just let Thrawn vanish back into the Unknown Regions.

Notes: Some familiar faces make an appearance.

Interlude

Location: _The Imperial Palace_

 _Coruscant_

The Emperor's palace on Coruscant never failed to take Mara Jade's breath away.

An imposing, square-like building, reminiscent of the ziggurats of pre-historic cultures, it was topped by five towering spires which seemed to pierce the clouds and afforded a stunning view of the city-planet.

Mara had heard rumors that the palace had once been the temple of the corrupt Jedi Order, but she didn't see how something so beautiful and aesthetically pleasing – so balanced – could have belonged to those traitors.

The day was clear and cold, a few wisps of clouds scuttling high above in Coruscant's artificial blue sky, and the sun was warm on her back as she climbed the steps of the Palace and presented her ID. The stormtrooper on duty gave both it and her a hard look, carefully checking her credentials and scanning her for weapons. He missed the lightsaber, but then they always did.

Still, she approved of his attention to detail and made a note to inform his commanding officer of such. The Emperor needed as many conscientious and capable guards around him as possible. The threat from these unifying rebel cells was only growing and she would allow no harm to come to her Master from these terrorists and criminals.

"Political advisor, hmm?" the guard said, eyeing her young face and the red-gold hair and green eyes which would better suit a high-level courtesan or exotic dancer than a mid-level analyst. If he knew who she really was…

Plainly disbelieving, he nonetheless waved her through the checkpoint when her credentials cleared.

Mara gave him a small smile that in no way reached her eyes and watched with satisfaction as his own eyes widened slightly in surprise. "Thank you, Lieutenant," she said firmly. And then she stepped around him into the wide, spacious entryway, tilting her head back to gaze up at the curved ceilings lost in darkness high above her. It was like another world in here.

The click of her boots resounded from every direction and there was only the muted hum of conversation from various Imperial dignitaries and bureaucrats to break the silence, as though they too felt the urge to lower their voices in this place.

There was something sacred here, Mara could feel it. Such did not surprise her for her Master lived here, but the faint echo of children's laughter – a Force memory – did. For a moment her world was filled with colors, flashes of faces she did not know.

… _Ahsoka, have you seen Anakin anywhere?..._

… _Depa, Master Windu wishes to see you…_

… _Quin, take that out of your mouth at once!..._

… _Luke, where are you?..._

The last was a woman's voice, commanding and vaguely familiar.

The voices faded away leaving Mara with an odd sense of loss.

She walked along deep red, carpeted floors, down hallways in which men and women clutching datapads scurried like ants, and past contingents of elite stormtroopers. She kept her hands down, face averted, and pace quick but hesitant – just another Imperial citizen called before the Emperor or his assistants for a brief meeting with greatness before she vanished back intot he nameless mass of bureaucracy.

The truth was much different. Her identichip scanned and cleared, she entered the private turbolift up to the Emperor's office and tried to still her racing heart. Wiping sweaty palms on her trousers, she watched the glint of sunlight on the orderly rows of traffic which filled Coruscant's airways.

She had been training for this moment her entire life. Today she would be given her first mission as the Emperor's Hand, an Imperial agent with Force-trained abilities who answer only to the Emperor.

She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, anchoring herself solely in the moment. The lift pinged, the red lights slowly grew, and the door slid open.

Mara stepped out into a round, sunlit room high above Coruscant's clouds and her eyes immediately found the kindly visage of her master.

"My child," the Emperor said, "come forward."

He slowly swiveled his chair around to face her fully, those cunning eyes scanning her just as intently as he probed her in the Force. Mara withstood his scrutiny, holding nothing back. At last the Emperor waved a hand at her. "You have completed your lightsaber, I see."

She unhooked the weapon which was hidden at the small of her back, under her uniform's coat, and held it out for her master to inspect. The Emperor ran careful fingers over its plain, silver hilt before igniting the blade.

That was the first time she felt a flash of surprise from him.

"Purple," he said, after a long pause during which he studied the blade and Mara wondered if she had done anything wrong. "Most unusual."

She didn't say anything to this comment. If her master was not satisfied with the weapon, he would command her to make a new one.

At last, however, he powered the blade down and handed the lightsaber back to her. "I believe such a color will work to our advantage." His eyes scanned her again. "Tell me, Mara Jade, why are you here?"

She wondered if this was a trick question. Nonetheless, she straightened up to almost military attention. "You have a mission for me, Master?" It was a question which was filled with hope and she cursed herself for being so transparent. A spy would be more disingenuous; her teachers would be less than impressed.

"Indeed," the Emperor said. "And forgive me, child, but how old are you?"

She gritted her teeth. This part might prover trickier. "I just turned sixteen, my lord."

To her surprise though, this answer seemed to please the Emperor. "Excellent. Most fortuitous. Yes, young Mara Jade, you should do nicely."

Mara wondered exactly what her age had to do with the mission.

"Your teachers speak highly of you, my child," the Emperor stated, and Mara knew better than to answer that in any way.

"We will see if their assessments are accurate," the Emperor mused. She could feel him in her head again, as well as sense his low level of annoyance.

"Interesting," her Master hissed. "You are correct, child. We are currently waiting on –"

The turbolift slid open again. "Ah, there he is," the Emperor murmured, and the black, armored figure of Darth Vader stepped into the room.

"I am so pleased you could finally join us, Lord Vader," the Emperor said as Vader's mechanical breathing filled Mara's awareness. "I trust you found your old rooms – the ones you once shared with your… _previous_ master – to be a comfort to you." There was sharp satisfaction in Palpatine's voice.

Vader's presence was overwhelming in the Force, biting cold as the depths of winter, and as ominous as an approaching storm. Mara blocked him out as much as possible, but he still made her stomach churn.

"Indeed," Vader said shortly, failing to respond to the Emperor's barb – whatever it meant – although a hot, sharp surge of anger hit Mara through the Force, one filled with menace, and her vision went dark for a moment, even as she tightened her hand on her lightsaber, ready to fight the dark lord in defense of her Emperor.

The moment passed and the Emperor laughed. "You truly are a perfect Sith, Darth Vader." He shook his head slightly in wonderment. "You never let anything go."

"No," said the mechanical monster, "my master."

The Emperor laughed again, a malicious cackle, before turning back to Mara.

"Your mission in one which Lord Vader has declined." The Emperor's disapproval was clear. "He claims he would be unable to locate our missing Grand Admiral Thrawn in the vastness of the Unknown Regions, that it would be like looking for a Hutt on Nal Hutta, that the Empire's resources would be better spent on other matters such as this _Rebellion_ –

– and other similar arguments."

Both Mara and Vader stayed silent and Mara's estimation of the other went up slightly. It had been so low to begin with though that this wasn't much of an improvement.

The Emperor eyed them both with disfavor.

"Very well," he snapped. "My Hand shall track down our errant Grand Admiral and return him to Coruscant for judgement and Lord Vader shall deal with this Rebellion."

The Emperor must have sensed Mara's unasked question.

"You may be wondering, my child, why I have not put a stop to these unifying rebel cells."

Mara had indeed been wondering. Tactically, it was much easier to defeat a rebellion before it unified under a single leader or command and gained both momentum and recognition.

"It was Lord Vader's suggestion to allow them to unify." Her opinion of Vader soured once more. "And I agree."

The Emperor smiled. "It is Lord Vader's job to hunt down the Jedi but for decades some have eluded him. Master Yoda, for instance. And Obi-Wan Kenobi."

Vader's anger flared once more and the Emperor watched his…whatever Vader was to him, with narrowed yellow eyes.

"This rebel movement has already drawn out several Jedi, and they have been dealt with, despite their low rank. Lord Vader believes that a unified rebel movement will draw out any remaining Jedi Masters." _The most dangerous and the most powerful._

Mara could, reluctantly, see a logic to this and Vader's obsession with hunting down Jedi was well-known. Still –

"Didn't Thrawn vanish with a Jedi onboard?" she asked, tying to remember the details of the classified report the Emperor had allowed her to read. "Ezra Bridger," she recalled the name.

"That boy was no Jedi," Vader snapped, and he sounded angry again. "His training was incomplete."

Mara wondered disparagingly if Vader thought the task beneath him.

"He is still a threat, as is our former ally, this Mitth'raw'nuruodo," the Emperor said, getting angry in his turn and all but hissing the words. "I want the Unknown Regions as well, Vader," the Emperor reminded his apprentice. "Our work is not yet finished together, my friend."

Mara could feel the tension between them, taut as a stretched wire. The Force hummed with power.

She cleared her throat. "Where would you like me to start my search, Your Majesty?"

The Emperor's gaze pulled away from Vader reluctantly and he fixed a pair of predatory yellow eyes on her face. "For that you will have a guide, my child," and he waved a hand, using the Force effortlessly. A door slid open and two of the Imperial guards entered the room, dragging a humanoid male roughly between them. They threw the figure down on the ground before the Emperor's desk before moving back towards the edges of the room where they took up positions.

Mara studied the humanoid with interest. Weequay, she decided after a moment, remembering her lessons on alien species. Older, given the tendrils of skin which hung down from his face and which resembled a beard. He had tough, leathery skin and a wiry appearance. His clothes were a hodge-podge and worn – someone on the fringes of society – and the way his glance darted to all sides of the room before he looked up at the Emperor showed either an experience with violence or a naturally devious disposition.

"Pirate Hondo Ohnaka," the Emperor said, studying the alien in his turn. "We meet at last."

Ohnaka raised his head, showing a face split by a devil-may-care grin and a pair of bright, mischievous eyes. "Indeed, indeed. You know my name. That is most excellent." And he bounded to his feet, causing the guards to place hands on their weapons, though he paid them no mind. "Of course, you would know the great Hondo Ohnaka! That's just good business! Why I was friends with both Count Dooku and General Kenobi – although not at the same time of course – "

Mara became aware of Vader's sudden stillness beside her. His mechanical breathing remained unchanged, his face – whoever and whatever he was – remained hidden behind that armored helmet, but his stance showed a hint of…uncertainty? As though he was…surprised?

Perhaps she wasn't reading him right. The Wheequay was still talking, bluff and ebullient. Mara had no idea why her master was letting the criminal prattle on like this.

"And you must be the…Emperor?"

"Indeed."

A brief hesitation. "And what can Hondo Ohnaka do for you, my fine sir?! Connections, that's what I have. I know everyone and have worked with – and against – everyone!"

"Which is the only reason you are still alive," the Emperor assured him drily.

This only damped the pirate's spirits momentarily. "Indeed, indeed," he agreed. "But I am still alive."

"For now," Vader rumbled.

Ohnaka's gaze slid over to the menacing visage of the Sith Lord. "Which is more than I can say for you, my friend."

Vader's hand curled into a fist and the one farthest from Mara gripped the hilt of his lightsaber, but the pirate had already turned away from him, seeming to dismiss the Sith Lord as a threat. Mara had to suppress the inappropriate urge to snort at the sense of…effrontery? she felt from Vader.

"Is this about my friend, Ezra Bridger?" the pirate demand now and Mara couldn't stop the shock that hit her, feeling echoes of her surprise from both Vader and the Emperor. The old pirate's cunning eyes were fixed on Palpatine's face and although Mara did not know the man's history, she reminded herself that it was never a good idea to underestimate someone just because they were old, grungy, and presented an appearance of bluff, good-humored incompetence.

 _Appearances are deceiving_ , she chastised herself.

Ohnaka obviously found what he was looking for in the Emperor's face. "Ah," he said simply. "You wish to know where the young Jedi has gone, yes?" He stroked the tendrils on his chin. "Well, theoretically I supposed, I could have planted a tracking device on him. For research purposes, you understand," he hastened to explain, as though someone had accused him of unsporting behavior. "I like to know where my investments are."

Vader rumbled again. "Where is he?" he demanded.

Mara had to suppress a small surge of annoyance. Vader had dismissed this mission as beneath his notice. He had no right to interfere with what the Emperor had given to her.

The pirate smiled apologetically and spread his hands wide. "I may have left the instructions on how to access the tracking devise and turn it on…in a safe location."

Vader took a step forward, threateningly.

"Ah, ah, ah," and Ohnaka actually waved a finger admonishingly at the Sith Lord. "Torturing me will take too long. The Jedi could have discovered the tracker by then and 'poof', vanished." He waved his arms around theatrically. "We Wheequays are hard to break and I am Hondo Ohnaka. Not even General Grievous caused me to betray…my men!"

 _Yourself, more like_ , Mara thought, but now she stepped forward. If Vader wanted to good cop, bad cop them, she was more than willing to play along.

"And will you take me to this location, instead?" She kept her most disarming smile in place. "We will find this young Jedi together," she promised. _You can leave here with me, or you can stay here with him_ , she didn't have to say, meaning Vader or the Emperor she left open for his imagination.

Ohnaka agreed with alacrity and the Emperor cackled once more.

"Good," he intoned, as Mara firmly marched Ohnaka from Vader and Emperor's presence. "Good. Everything is going according to plan."

As the turbolift doors slid closed after them both – the Emperor's Hand and the pirate – Mara watched Vader turn towards them. His masked face was utterly impassive, but menace filled the air around him and his hand remained on his lightsaber hilt. She had the oddest feeling though that his menace was not for her, that he barely noticed her presence, but was instead for the old pirate at her side.

As though he would kill the Wheequay if he ever got the chance.

Mara eyed Ohnaka without turning her head; a useful trick her teachers had taught her. The old pirate shivered, visibly, but his gaze was…Mara had to turn back to Vader to track his eyeline. His gaze was on the Sith Lord's lightsaber. Understandable.

She would have thought no more about it except that it was not precisely fear she was seeing on the old pirate's face. She pondered the alien's physiognomy and the potential meanings for what she had seen as they descended in silence down the turbolift.

It was only when she exited back onto the main level, Ohnaka keeping close on her heels, and she came face to face with a Dathomiri inquisitor she had sparred with several times. The two women passed a single look between them before averting their eyes and continuing on separate paths.

The look on Ohnaka's face, muted, confused, as he gazed at Darth Vader's lightsaber, had been the same.

Recognition.

Mara Jade returns. And trying to see what her reaction to the Jedi Temple (now Palpatine's palace) would be was really fun. Also, her bird's eye view to Palpatine and Vader's contentious relationship was great too. Her relationship with Palpatine is interesting, as is her relationship with Vader – no respect for him whatsoever lol, in contrast with Thrawn; two Imperials who are more "morally grey" instead of just evil.

I'm not sure how true any of this is too the books in Legends – I read them so long ago I can no longer remember – but it felt right. It's part of what makes her such a great foil and then partner for Luke; she's just not afraid of people who are vastly more powerful than she is.

Vader's never-ending obsession with Obi-Wan continues.

Anyone want any more scenes with what Darth Vader is up to? I'm trying to find a way to add one more in, but the story seems to have moved away from him after this. Still, if anyone's interested, I'll try and find a way to work it in.

This chapter was honestly supposed to be just a couple of paragraphs, but it wanted to be written…and then Vader inserted himself…and then Hondo made an appearance… and you all got another chapter out of me. So, that's why it's called "Interlude," because although about Thrawn and Ezra in a way, it's actually more about the various dynamics between Mara, Palpatine and Anakin/Vader. With Hondo thrown in, much to his discomfort.

Back to the main storyline next chapter. Thrawn and Ar'alani meet for the first time since Thrawn's Exile and Ezra and Thrawn go before the Aristocracy of the Chiss Ascendency. Thrawn has a plan, but Ezra might not like the consequences.


End file.
